inanimate

• adj.

• 生命のない、無生命の、非情の。意識のない。活気のない、気の抜けた(dull)。(文法)無生の

　 　 　

WordNet

1. belonging to the class of nouns denoting nonliving things; "the word `car is inanimate"
2. not endowed with life; "the inorganic world is inanimate"; "inanimate objects" (同)nonliving, non-living
3. not having life (同)lifelessness

PrepTutorEJDIC

1. 生命のない(lifeless) / 生気のない,退屈な(dull)

Wikipedia preview

出典(authority):フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』「2015/05/24 09:35:18」(JST)

wiki en

[Wiki en表示]

Grammatical categories
Agency Animacy Associated motion Aspect Case Clusivity Comparison Definiteness Evidentiality Focus Gender Honorifics Mirativity Modality Mood Noun class Number Person Polarity Tense Topic Transitivity Valency Voice Volition

Animacy is a grammatical and semantic principle expressed in language based on how sentient or alive the referent of a noun is. Widely expressed, animacy is one of the most elementary principles in languages around the globe, and is a distinction acquired as early as 6 months of age.

Concepts of animacy constantly vary beyond a simple animate vs. inanimate binary; many languages function off of a hierarchical General Animacy Scale that ranks animacy as a “matter of gradience”. Typically (with some variation of order and of where the cutoff for animacy occurs) the scale ranks humans above animals, then plants, natural forces, concrete objects, and abstract objects, in that order. In referring to humans, this scale contains a Hierarchy of ‘Persons’, ranking first and second person pronouns above third person – partly a product of empathy, involving the speaker and interlocutor. Additionally, the hierarchy tends to place singular persons over plural (as seen in the heavy difference between “I regret to inform you” and “We regret to inform you”) – though this carries exceptions (such as thousands of people signing a petition).

Examples

The distinction between {he, she, and other personal pronouns} on the one hand, and it on the other, is a distinction in animacy in English and in many Indo-European languages. The same can be said about distinction between who and what. Some languages, such as Turkish, Spoken Finnish and Spanish do not distinguish between s/he and it. In Finnish there is a distinction in animacy between hän "he/she" and se "it", however in Spoken Finnish se also can have the meaning "he/she". English shows a similar lack of distinction between they animate and they inanimate in plural, but does as shown above have such a distinction in singular.

There is another example of how animacy plays some role in English. For example, the higher animacy a referent has, the less preferable it is to use the preposition of for possession, as follows (this can also be interpreted in terms of alienable versus inalienable possession):

• My face is correct, while *the face of me is not.
• The man's face and the face of the man are both correct, and the former is preferred.
• The clock's face and the face of the clock are both correct, and the latter is preferred.

Examples of languages in which an animacy hierarchy is important include the Mexican language Totonac and the Southern Athabaskan languages (such as Western Apache and Navajo), whose animacy hierarchy has been the subject of intense study. The Tamil language has a noun classification based on animacy.

Proto-Indo-European language

Because of the similarities in morphology of feminine and masculine grammatical gender inflections in Indo-European languages, there is a theory that in an early stage the Proto-Indo-European language had only two grammatical genders: "animate" and "inanimate/neuter". This distinction is preserved in Anatolian languages like Hittite.

The animate gender would then later (after separation of Anatolian languages) have developed into the feminine and masculine genders. The plural of neuter/inanimate nouns has assumed to originally have had the same ending as collective nouns in singular, and some words with this collective noun ending in singular were later to become feminine gender words. Traces of this can be found in Ancient Greek, where the singular form of verbs was used when they referred to neuter words in plural. In many Indo-European languages, such as Latin and Slavic, the plural ending of many neuter words in nominative, accusative and vocative corresponds to the feminine singular nominative form.

Navajo

Like most other Athabaskan languages, Southern Athabaskan languages show various levels of animacy in their grammar, with certain nouns taking specific verb forms according to their rank in this animacy hierarchy. For instance, Navajo nouns can be ranked by animacy on a continuum from most animate (a human) to least animate (an abstraction) (Young & Morgan 1987: 65-66):

Human > Infant/Big Animal > Medium-sized Animal > Small Animal > Natural Force > Abstraction

Generally, the most animate noun in a sentence must occur first while the noun with lesser animacy occurs second. If both nouns are equal in animacy, then either noun can occur in the first position. So both sentences (1) and (2) are correct. The yi- prefix on the verb indicates that the 1st noun is the subject and bi- indicates that the 2nd noun is the subject.

(1)	Ashkii	at’ééd	yiníł’į́
	boy	girl	yi-look
	'The boy is looking at the girl.'

(2)	At’ééd	ashkii	biníł’į́
	girl	boy	bi-look
	'The girl is being looked at by the boy.'

But sentence (3) sounds wrong to most Navajo speakers because the less animate noun occurs before the more animate noun:

(3)	*Tsídii	at’ééd	yishtąsh
	bird	girl	yi-pecked
	*'The bird pecked the girl.'

In order to express this idea, the more animate noun must occur first, as in sentence (4):

(4)	At’ééd	tsídi	bishtąsh
	girl	bird	bi-pecked
	'The girl was pecked by the bird.'

Japanese

Although nouns in Japanese are not marked for animacy, it has two existential/possessive verbs; one for implicitly animate nouns (usually humans and animals) and one for implicitly inanimate nouns (often non-living objects and plants). The verb iru (いる also written 居る）is used to show the existence or possession of an animate noun. The verb aru (ある, sometimes written 在る when existential or 有る when possessive) is used to show the existence or possession of an inanimate noun.

An animate noun, in this case 'cat,' is marked as the subject of the verb with the subject particle ga (が), but no topic and no location are marked. This implies the noun is indefinite and merely exists.

(1)	Neko	ga	iru.
	猫	が	いる
	cat	SUBJECT	to exist
	'There is a cat.'

In the second example, a topic is introduced, in this case "I", with the topic particle wa (は). The animate noun is again marked with a subject particle, and no location is denoted. This implies that the topic owns, or perhaps is holding onto, the noun.

(2)	Watashi	ni	wa	neko	ga	iru.
	私	に	は	猫	が	いる
	I	LOC	TOPIC	cat	SUBJECT	to exist
	'I have a cat.'

In the third example, the noun is marked as the topic (and by default functions as the subject of the verb) while a location, in this case the top of a chair, is marked with the location particle ni (に). This implies that the noun is both a definite noun and that is located at the specified location.

(3)	Neko	wa	isu no ue	ni	iru.
	猫	は	椅子の上	に	いる
	cat	TOPIC	chair+NOUNCOORDINATOR+above/on	LOCATION	to exist
	'The cat is on the chair.'

In all of those cases, if the noun is not animate, such as a stone, instead of a cat, the verb iru must be replaced with the verb aru (ある or 有る[possessive]/在る[existential,locative]).

(1)	Ishi	ga	aru.
	石	が	ある
	stone	SUBJECT	to exist
	'There is a stone.'

(2)	Watashi	ni	wa	ishi	ga	aru.
	私	に	は	石	が	ある
	I	LOC	TOPIC	stone	SUBJECT	to exist
	'I have a stone.'

(3)	Ishi	wa	isu no ue	ni	aru.
	石	は	椅子の上	に	ある
	stone	TOPIC	chair+NOUNCOORDINATOR+above/on	LOCATION	to exist
	'The stone is on the chair.'

In some cases where 'natural' animacy is ambiguous, whether a noun is animate or not is the decision of the speaker, as in the case of a robot, which could be correlated with the animate verb (to signify sentience or anthropomorphism), or with the inanimate verb (to emphasise that is a non-living thing).

(1)	Robotto	ga	iru.
	ロボット	が	いる
	robot	SUBJECT	to exist
	'There is a robot' (emphasis on its human-like behavior).

(2)	Robotto	ga	aru.
	ロボット	が	ある
	robot	SUBJECT	to exist
	'There is a robot' (emphasis on its status as a non-living thing).

Ryukyuan Languages

The Ryukyuan Languages spoken in the Japanese Ryukyuan islands agree in animacy in their case marking systems.

Russian

Overview

Russian has a somewhat complex hierarchy of animacy in which syntactically animate nouns may include both animate and inanimate objects (like mushrooms and dances). Overall, the border between animate and inanimate places humans and animals in the former and plants, etc., in the latter – thus basing itself more so on sentience than “aliveness”.

Animacy functions as a ‘subgender’ through which noun cases intersect in a phenomenon called syncretism, which here can be either nominative-accusative or genitive-accusative. Inanimate nouns have accusative forms that take on the same forms as their nominative – meanwhile, animate nouns are marked by instead having their genitive forms resemble nominative. For example, syncretism conditioned by referential animacy results in forms like the following:

• NOM stol ‘table’ -> ACC stol, like nom (exhibiting nom-acc syncretism)
• NOM kot ‘cat’ -> ACC kota, like gen (exhibiting gen-acc syncretism)

This gen-acc syncretism also occurs when restricted by declension class, resulting in syncretism in multiple pronominal forms, such as the reflexive pronoun sebja, personal pronouns, and the indefinite interrogative and relative pronoun kto.

In their plural forms, nouns of all genders may distinguish the categories of animate vs. inanimate via this gen-acc syncretism, but only masculine nouns of the first declension (and their modifiers) show it in the singular (Frarie 1992:12), while other declensions and genders of nouns “restrict (morphological) expression of animacy to the plural” (Frarie 1992:47).

• Masc nouns that show syncretism in both sg and plural: муж [muʂ] ‘husband,’ сын [sɨn] ‘son,’ лев [lʲef] ‘lion,’ конь [konʲ] ‘horse’
• Fem animate/neut animate nouns that show syncretism in only plural: женщина [ˈʐɛnʲɕːɪnə] ‘woman,’, животное animal, лошадь [ˈɫoʂətʲ] horse

Elsewhere, animacy is displayed syntactically, such as in endings of modifiers for masc nouns of the 2nd declension

Animacy as a “subgender”

While animacy is viewed as primarily semantic when approach diachronically, a synchronic view suggests animacy as a sublevel of gender. Syntactic gender is defined through patterns in agreement, not necessarily semantic value – for example, Russian has “common gender” nouns that refer to traditionally masculine roles but act as syntactically feminine.

Animacy occurs as a subgender of nouns and modifiers (and pronouns, only when adjectival) and is primarily reflected in modifier-head agreement (as opposed to subject-predicate agreement).

Controversy

Some consider the system to be based on marking inanimacy, in which case the gen-acc distinguishes a “non-inanimate” subgender of nouns and modifiers; while others claim that ultimately it is indeed animacy that is marked.

Sinhala

In spoken Sinhala, there are two existential/possessive verbs: හිටිනවා hiţinawā / ඉන්නවා innawā are used only for animate nouns (humans and animals), while තියෙනවා tiyenawā for inanimate nouns (non-living objects, plants, things, etc.)

For example:

(1)	minihā	innawā
	මිනිහා	ඉන්නවා
	man	there is/exists (animate)
	There is the man

(2)	watura	tiyenawā
	වතුර	තියෙනවා
	water	there is/exists (inanimate)
	There is water

Spanish

Nouns

In Spanish, the preposition a (meaning "to" or "at") has gained a second role as a marker of concrete animate direct objects:

Veo esa catedral.	"I can see that cathedral."	(inanimate direct object)
Veo a esa persona	"I can see that person."	(animate direct object)
Vengo a España.	"I come to Spain."	(a used in its literal sense)

This usage is fully standard and is found around the Spanish-speaking world.

Pronouns

Spanish personal pronouns are generally omitted when they are the subject of the sentence, but when they are explicitly stated, they are used only with people or humanized animals or things. There are no inanimate subject pronouns in Spanish, like it in English.

Spanish direct object pronouns (me, te, lo, la, se, nos, os, los, las) do not differentiate between animate and inanimate entities, and only the third persons have gender distinction. Thus, for example, the third person singular feminine pronoun, la, could refer to a woman, an animal (e.g., mariposa, butterfly) or an object (e.g. casa, house), provided that their genders are feminine.

With pronouns, there is a tendency to use le (which is usually an indirect object pronoun, meaning "to him/her") as a direct-object pronoun, at the expense of the direct-object pronouns lo/la, when the referent is animate. This tendency is especially strong (a) when the pronoun is being used as a special second-person pronoun of respect, (b) when the referent is male, (c) with certain verbs, (d) when the subject of the verb happens to be inanimate. There is great regional variation as regards this usage.

Arabic

In Classical and Modern Standard Arabic and some other Varieties of Arabic, animacy has a limited application in the agreement of plural and dual nouns with verbs and adjectives. Only animate plural and dual nouns take plural agreement; inanimate plural and dual nouns are analyzed as singular feminine for purposes of agreement. Thus Arabic يطيرون المهندسون إلى ألمانيا (Yuṭīrūn al-muhandisūn 'ilā 'Almāniyā, "The engineers fly to Germany") demonstrates masculine plural agreement, but تطير الطائرات إلى ألمانيا (Tuṭīr al-ṭā'irāt 'ilā 'Almāniyā, "The planes fly to Germany") demonstrates feminine singular agreement. Compare these to تطير المهندسة إلى ألمانيا (Tuṭīr al-muhandisah 'ilā 'Almāniyā, "The [female] engineer flies to Germany") and يطيرن المهندسات إلى ألمانيا (Tuṭīrna al-muhandisāt 'ilā 'Almāniyā, "The [female] engineers fly to Germany"). There is some dispute about whether non-human animals are considered animate or inanimate for grammatical purposes, and their status may depend on the usage in question. Thus different writers might use يطيرون الغربان إلى ألمانيا (Yuṭīrūn al-ghurbān 'ilā 'Almāniyā) or تطير الغربان إلى ألمانيا (Tuṭīr al-ghurbān 'ilā 'Almāniyā) for "The ravens fly to Germany."

Animacy hierarchy and morphosyntactic alignment

Split ergativity

Animacy can also condition the nature of the morphologies of split-ergative languages. In such languages, participants more animate are more likely to be the agent of the verb, and therefore are marked in an accusative pattern: unmarked in the agent role and marked in the patient or oblique role.

Likewise, less animate participants are inherently more patient-like, and take ergative marking: unmarked when in the patient role and marked when in the agent role. The hierarchy of animacy generally, but not always, is ordered:

1st person

>

2nd person

>

3rd person

>

proper names

>

humans

>

non-humans animates

>

inanimates

The location of the split (the line which divides the inherently agentive participants from the inherently patientive participants) varies from language to language, and, in many cases, the two classes overlap, with a class of nouns near the middle of the hierarchy being marked for both the agent and patient roles.

Hierarchical alignment

In a direct–inverse language clauses with transitive verbs can be expressed with either a direct or an inverse construction. The direct construction is used when the subject of the transitive clause outranks the object in salience or animacy. The inverse construction is used when the "notional object" outranks the "notional subject".

Thematic roles

A noun essentially requires the traits of animacy in order to receive the role of Actor and Experiencer. Additionally, the Agent role is generally assigned to the NP with highest ranking in the animacy hierarchy – ultimately, only animate beings can function as true agents. Similarly, languages universally tend to place animate nouns earlier in the sentence than inanimate nouns. Animacy is a key component of agency – combined with other factors like “awareness of action”. Agency and animacy are intrinsically linked – with each as a “conceptual property” of the other.

See also

• Grammatical gender
• Noun class
• Classifier (linguistics)

References

• Frishberg, Nancy. (1972). Navajo object markers and the great chain of being. In J. Kimball (Ed.), Syntax and semantics, (Vol. 1), (p. 259-266). New York: Seminar Press.
• Hale, Kenneth L. (1973). A note on subject–object inversion in Navajo. In B. B. Kachru, R. B. Lees, Y. Malkiel, A. Pietrangeli, & S. Saporta (Eds.), Issues in linguistics: Papers in honor of Henry and Renée Kahane, (p. 300-309). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
• Thomas E. Payne, 1997. Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-58224-5
• Young, Robert W., & Morgan, William, Sr. (1987). The Navajo language: A grammar and colloquial dictionary (rev. ed.). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-1014-1

UpToDate Contents

全文を閲覧するには購読必要です。 To read the full text you will need to subscribe.

• 1. 小児におけるメチシリン耐性黄色ブドウ球菌感染の疫学および臨床的な感染形式 epidemiology and clinical spectrum of methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus infections in children
• 2. 寄生虫妄想症：疫学、臨床症状、評価および診断 delusional parasitosis epidemiology clinical presentation assessment and diagnosis
• 3. 成人におけるメチシリン耐性黄色ブドウ球菌感染症の疫学 epidemiology of methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus infection in adults
• 4. 小児における感冒：臨床的特徴および診断 the common cold in children clinical features and diagnosis
• 5. 水曝露後の軟部組織感染 soft tissue infections following water exposure

English Journal

• Evaluation of aggressiveness of female mice using a semi-automated apparatus for measurement of aggressive biting behavior toward an inanimate object.

• Kuchiiwa T1, Kuchiiwa S2.
• Journal of neuroscience methods.J Neurosci Methods.2016 Jan 15;257:179-84. doi: 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2015.10.005. Epub 2015 Oct 17.
• BACKGROUND: Most laboratory research on aggressive behavior has focused on intraspecific intermale aggression tests. The intraspecific confrontation is not available for the evaluation of female aggressiveness, since androgens are critical for maintenance of this behavior, whereas aggressive biting
• PMID 26484786

• Encodings of implied motion for animate and inanimate object categories in the two visual pathways.

• Lu Z1, Li X2, Meng M3.
• NeuroImage.Neuroimage.2016 Jan 15;125:668-80. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.10.059. Epub 2015 Oct 24.
• Previous research has proposed two separate pathways for visual processing: the dorsal pathway for "where" information vs. the ventral pathway for "what" information. Interestingly, the middle temporal cortex (MT) in the dorsal pathway is involved in representing implied motion from still pictures,
• PMID 26505302

• Intraclonal genome diversity of the major Pseudomonas aeruginosa clones C and PA14.

• Fischer S1, Klockgether J1, Losada PM1, Chouvarine P1, Cramer N1, Davenport CF1, Dethlefsen S1, Dorda M1, Goesmann A2, Hilker R2, Mielke S1, Schönfelder T1, Suerbaum S3, Türk O1, Woltemate S3, Wiehlmann L1, Tümmler B1,4.
• Environmental microbiology reports.Environ Microbiol Rep.2015 Dec 28. doi: 10.1111/1758-2229.12372. [Epub ahead of print]
• Bacterial populations differentiate at the subspecies level into clonal complexes. Intraclonal genome diversity was studied in one hundred isolates of the two dominant Pseudomonas aeruginosa clones C and PA14 collected from the inanimate environment, acute and chronic infections. The core genome was
• PMID 26711897

• Who Is the Dynamic Duo? How Infants Learn About the Identity of Objects in a Causal Chain.

• Rakison DH, Smith GT, Ali A.
• Developmental psychology.Dev Psychol.2015 Dec 21. [Epub ahead of print]
• Four experiments investigated infants' and adults' knowledge of the identity of objects in a causal sequence of events. In Experiments 1 and 2, 18- and 22-month-olds in the visual habituation procedure were shown a 3-step causal chain event in which the relation between an object's part (dynamic or
• PMID 26689760

Japanese Journal

• Goal attribution to inanimate moving objects by Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata)

• Scientific Reports 7, 2017-01-05
• NAID 120005997789

• 非情物主格・行為者ニ標示受動文について――コーパス上の実例に基づく― 考察――

• 神戸外大論叢 = Journal of foreign studies 66(1), 19-40, 2016-12-22
• NAID 120005903189

• 地域的・類型論的観点からみた無生物主語について

• 北方言語研究 (6), 81-110, 2016-01
• NAID 120005712521

• 連語論的アプローチによる無生物主語他動詞文の日中対照 : コレスポンデンス分析による成立要因の検討

• 計量国語学 = Mathematical linguistics : 計量国語学会機関誌 30(7), 395-416, 2016
• NAID 40021043047

Related Links

• INANIMATE : Comics and Animation by Tim Finn

Most links here on the front page of Inanimate take you to my blog. This one's no exception. Two weeks back I wrote a lengthy explanation-and-list of what I did for the book last year. But there are pictures, too. It's here. It's been ...

• Inanimate | Define Inanimate at Dictionary.com

Linguistics. belonging to a syntactic category or having a semantic feature that is characteristic of words denoting objects, concepts, and beings regarded as ... Libra Born under the only inanimate sign symbol—the Scales—you can ...

• inanimateの意味 - 英和辞書 - 英語辞書 - goo辞書

inanimateとは。意味や和訳。[形]1 生命のない，無生物の；死んだan inanimate object無生物an inanimate form（意識を失って）動かない体.2 生気のない，活気のない；不活発なan inanimate tone of voice活気のない話しぶり.3 ...

Related Pictures