Animacy (antonym: inanimacy) is a grammatical and semantic feature, existing in some languages, expressing how sentient or alive the referent of a noun is. [1]

Animacy is one of the most elementary principles in many languages, and is a distinction understood at a very early age. Slavic languages that have case, including Russian, have a complex hierarchy of …

May 23, 2024 · Animacy, in quite a few languages, is the classification of nouns, and the things these words refer, based on the degree to which they are “alive” or animate. Some languages simply …

Define animacy. animacy synonyms, animacy pronunciation, animacy translation, English dictionary definition of animacy. tr.v. an·i·mat·ed , an·i·mat·ing , an·i·mates 1. To give life to; fill with life: the …

animacy, n. meanings, etymology, pronunciation and more in the Oxford English Dictionary

Nov 6, 2025 · (linguistics) In some languages, the characteristic of a noun, dependent on its living or sentient nature, which affects grammatical features (it can modify verbs used with the noun, affect …

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.

Nov 5, 2024 · The articles on attention and perception not only identify factors that lead to the perception of animacy, but more uniquely how animacy affects downstream judgments and decisions that we …

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 basic principles in languages …

Animacy definition: (linguistics) The characteristic of a <a>noun</a>, in some languages, that is dependent on its <a>living</a> or <a>sentient</a> nature; this characteristic affects …