Animacy - Examples

Examples

The distinction between he/she and it 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.