How to identify animate and inanimate

The grammatical categories of animation / inanimate nouns express the opposition of living beings and all other objects and phenomena of reality. These two categories are determined not only by semantic questions, but also by the grammatical form of the accusative case of the plural and the accusative case of the singular masculine nouns.

You will need

- The analyzed noun.

Instruction manual

one

Animated nouns are the names of living things - people and animals. Define the category of animation on the semantic question "who?" For example, a girl, a cat, a crane. Pay attention to hard-to-determine options: (who?) Dead man, puppet, queen.

2

If you have difficulty in determining the category of animation, put the noun in the form of the accusative plural and genitive plural. If it matches, then it is an animated noun. For example, (I see) girls, puppets - (no) girls, puppets. In the singular, the animation category is grammatically expressed only in masculine nouns of the II declension (horse, giraffe). For example, (see) a giraffe - (no) a giraffe.

3

Inanimate nouns give names to objects and phenomena of reality that are not considered to be living beings. Define the category of inanimate according to the semantic question "what?" For example, (what?) Ray, sun, feeling.

4

The inanimate category is expressed in the coincidence of the accusative and nominative plural forms, for example: (what?) People - (see) people. Also, these forms coincide for masculine and neuter genders of the II declension, for example: (what?) Table, field - (see) table, field.

5

Please note that the category of animation / inanimate is expressed in pronouns. Personal pronouns “I”, “you”, “we”, “you”, “he”, “she”, “it”, “they”, relative “who” and its derivatives, definitive “everything”, not directly related with living things, are grammatically animated, because they have the same accusative and genitive forms. Other pronouns do not have this category.

6

As a variable morphological character, this category is also expressed in adjectives, possessive pronouns such as "mine", "ours", full forms of participles and numerals "two", "three", "four", "both". Compare: (see) our new walls - (see) our new students. When contrasting the forms of the accusative plural, a variable sign of animation / inanimate in these parts of speech is revealed.