Talk:Animacy

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Hey there Wikipedia community! Just making a quick post to say that myself and a handful of others were assigned revitalization of this page as part of a university project. This page will undergo major reno in the next few days (until Dec 18 2024) - bear with us, and feel free to check over any new additions/reach out if you have any comments or concerns! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Issabei (talk • contribs) 23:56, 15 December 2024 (UTC)Reply

* I hit the door's knob.
* *I hit the door on the knob. (incorrect)

Surely we would say 'I hit the doorknob'? I would think it is fairly common to leave off the 's genetive for a smaller part of some inanimate noun (e.g. table leg). Also, I would contend that 'I hit the door on the knob' is not incorrect. --Junglehungry 16:07, 11 February 2007 (UTC)Reply

In the section about animacy in English, the article uses the example of the correct "my face" vs. the incorrect "the face of me." However, what about the expression "for the life of me"; i.e., "I can't for the life of me figure out how to open this package!" Granted, this is more of a stock phrase, but when it was new it wasn't. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.98.72.55 (talk) 04:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC) --158.111.4.51 (talk) 18:51, 17 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

The English section has a number of problems--to the extent that I think I have to disagree with the proposed generalization. Consider "the face of God," or the expressions all/part/some/enough of me, or the immortal movie title "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia." All of these examples suggest that *"the face of me" is the kind of phrase that is behaving differently, and not the paradigmatic case at all. Pronouns are always goofy in English, anyway. "Lord Rutherford's stern gaze" and "the stern gaze of Lord Rutherford" are equally workable. As for the other end of the supposed continuum, who says "the face of the clock" is preferable? I find myself indifferent between the choices. We were just discussing the film "Winter's Bone," and I don't think anyone said it really should have been called "The Bone of Winter." There may be a very general sort of tendency here, and there may not, but there is assuredly no rule and the article far overstates any case there is to be made. Thoughts, anyone? --Craigkbryant (talk) 18:53, 17 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

I think a better way to think about animacy is to do with ability to influence the world rather than "aliveness" or "sentience", which explains why natural phenomena are more animate than concrete objects despite not being any more alive. This, I think, explains your first example of "the face of God" as God, despite being human-like in many ways, has no effect on the world whatsoever and thus would be very inanimate (I don't think this argument is very strong). in a lot of these examples, especially "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.", the desire to put the possesser last is more a matter of emphasis, it is for pragmatic/semantic reasons that it is ordered as such. if it were not a head (impactful and emotive) but a chair (who cares); "Bring Me the Chair of Alfredo Garcia." is highly disprefered to "Bring Me Alfredo Garcia's chair.". A noun even less animate than a clock, is a statement., and I hope you can see that "The truth of the statement" is preferable to "the statement's truth". 2A02:C7C:CA1E:7800:C8C0:A11:8DF2:A268 (talk) 15:41, 28 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Grammatical virility (which might be a more accurate description of what exactly is going on in the Russian example given) is in some sense an area on the continuum of animacy-inanimacy. Does it deserve a separate page, or would it be appropriate to add a section to this one? Myself, I could only add information for Russian and Old Church Slavonic at best. Duke Atreides (talk) 06:29, 1 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

in Navajo... the structure being translated as passive voice would more accurately be translated as something like "A let itself be x'ed by B"--that is, the implication/intent is that the higher-animacy thing is controlling the situation, so if the lower-animacy thing does something, it's only because the higher-animacy thing allowed it. It seems like that should be mentioned somehow, but 1. I can't quite find the source, and 2. I'm not sure how to phrase it encyclopedically enough. Thoughts? Tamtrible (talk) 09:40, 19 February 2015 (UTC)Reply

Also, I'm pretty sure the animacy heirarchy is being incorrectly represented, it's not to do with size, it's to do with speech. That is, a small thing that can "cry" is of higher animacy than a large thing that can't. I'm pretty sure a housecat would be at the same animacy level as a horse. I won't correct it myself, because I'm not *sure* (the linguistics class was nigh unto 2 decades ago), but... I think it's wrong. I'm pretty sure the correct heirarchy would be "things that can talk"/"things that can cry/make noise, but not talk"/"animals that can't cry"/"living things that aren't animals" (then, not sure of any further heirarchy, what's there is probably correct) Tamtrible (talk) 17:32, 18 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Any more than a three-level human-animal-thing hierarchy is really stretching it and verging on Original Research. Include sufficient verifiable sources or leave it out of the article.. 24.237.158.9 (talk) 05:56, 22 September 2017 (UTC)Reply

I found the section on Arabic somewhat opaque and would like to see improvement. However, I know no Arabic and am not in a position to do that improvement. Here is how it reads as of this post, with my annotations:

===Arabic===

In Classical and Modern Standard Arabic and some other varieties of Arabic,

It would be good to list the varieties this applies to, either inline or as a linked footnone.

animacy has a limited application in the agreement of plural and dual nouns with verbs and adjectives.

Verbs follow nouns in plural agreement only when the verb comes after the subject. When a verb comes before an explicit subject, the verb is always singular. Also, only animate plural and dual nouns take plural agreement; inanimate plural nouns are always analyzed as singular feminine or plural feminine for the purpose of agreement.

Are we talking about animacy vs. inanimacy here, or about a general feature of Arabic? Would the following reworking be correct? Or can the above text be replaced with something similar to my rewording but have correct information?

"Animacy/inanimacy only affects the verb form when there is an explicit noun subject and the verb follows the noun; otherwise a singular verb form is used. For animate plural or dual nouns, affected verbs agree in number with the noun. For inanimate plural nouns, the verb is feminine singular or feminine plural."

Is there a rule how to make the choice between feminine singular or feminine plural?

Thus, Arabic المهندسون يطيرون إلى ألمانيا (Al-muhandisūn yaṭīrūn 'ilā 'Almāniyā, "The engineers fly to Germany") is masculine plural agreement, but الطائرات تطير إلى ألمانيا (Al-ṭā'irāt taṭīr 'ilā 'Almāniyā, "The planes fly to Germany") is feminine singular.

Compare them to تطير المهندسات إلى ألمانيا (Taṭīr al-muhandisāt 'ilā 'Almāniyā) and المهندسات يطرن إلى ألمانيا (Al-muhandisāt yaṭirna 'ilā 'Almāniyā) for "The [female] engineers fly to Germany."

Is there a difference between تطير المهندسات إلى ألمانيا (Taṭīr al-muhandisāt 'ilā 'Almāniyā) and المهندسات يطرن إلى ألمانيا (Al-muhandisāt yaṭirna 'ilā 'Almāniyā) in meaning? I'm guessing the first is male and the second is female, but it would be better if the translations were separated and I didn't have to guess.

In general, Arabic divides animacy between عاقل (thinking, or rational) and غير عاقل (unthinking, or irrational). Animals fall in the latter category, but their status may change depending on the usage, especially with personification. Different writers might use الغربان يطيرون إلى ألمانيا (Al-ġurbān yaṭīrūn 'ilā 'Almāniyā)

Is الغربان يطيرون إلى ألمانيا (Al-ġurbān yaṭīrūn 'ilā 'Almāniyā) animate or inanimate?

or الغربان تطير إلى ألمانيا (Al-ġurbān taṭīr 'ilā 'Almāniyā) for "The ravens fly to Germany."

Is الغربان تطير إلى ألمانيا (Al-ġurbān taṭīr 'ilā 'Almāniyā) animate or inanimate?

An interlinear gloss breakout using {{Interlinear}} would be great as well.

Thisisnotatest (talk) 22:22, 13 March 2026 (UTC)Reply