Animacy Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Email for full. Ancient scribes writing Biblical Hebrew could mark a Goal argument (the place to which one is moving) with the directive he suffix, with a directional preposition, or as an accusative of destination. Previous studies have explained this alternation in terms of a few historical or linguistic variables at a time. In this study, I use a comprehensive dataset (all factive Goals from prose Biblical Hebrew texts), a broad set of potential explanatory variables coded for each Goal and the clause in which it appears (including more than thirty diachronic, social, and linguistic variables, with a particular focus on previously-understudied syntactic-semantic variables), various statistical tools (especially multinomial logistical regression), and comparative data (from Epigraphic Hebrew, Biblical Aramaic, Ugaritic, and Akkadian) to explore the influences on and choices of the ancient scribes. Important findings of this study include indications that 1) scribes of the Late Biblical Hebrew corpus consciously promoted the use of directive he despite the convergence of the Late Biblical Hebrew goal-marking system with that of Aramaic, as evidenced in the behavior of the goal-marking prepositions across time (a conclusion not consistent with purely stylistic explanations of the linguistic differences between Classical and Late Biblical Hebrew); 2) due to educational and social disruptions during the exile, the scribes originating texts described as Transitional Biblical Hebrew mobilized fewer prestigious linguistic features than scribes of the Classical and Late corpora, as evidenced by limitations in their goal-marking repertoires and paralleled by data from other Semitic corpora; 3) the scribes’ choices between goal-marking strategies are largely driven by sensitivity to a Prototypical Intransitive Motion Construction (in which a salient Affected Agent moves successfully and completely to an inanimate single-point Goal that contains inherent, specific geographic information) and other Motion Construction prototypes (Caused-Motion, Pursuit, etc.), with the directive he and the accusative of direction being strongly correlated with more-prototypical environments; and 4) individual prepositions may encode the type of Goal location (single-point or divisible), the place of the Goal in the information structure of the text, the mover’s configuration with respect to the Goal, or Goal animacy.

An evaluation of whether the special endings that appear on Anatolian neuter gender nouns in Agent-function reflect split-NP ergativity or an 'animatising' derivative. Appendix includes an exploration of why the Anatolian 'animatising'... more

- by Oscar Jäntti
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- Historical Linguistics, Historical Syntax, Indo-European Studies, Hittite

La gramatika kategorio genro estas trajto de multaj lingvoj, i.a. hindeŭropaj kaj ŝemidaj, grava pro la amplekso de la koncernataj vortospecoj (substantivoj, adjektivoj, pronomoj, numeraloj, artikoloj, verboj...), pro la rolo ludata en la... more

- by Marc Bavant
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- Syntax-Semantics Interface, Ergativity, Animacy, Agreement

Recent writing in the field of posthumanism challenges the strict bifurcation between life and death or dead and undead. In this paper I analyze the performance piece Human Oil by Peng Yu to ask how the field of posthumanism may account for loss if death ceases to be a workable concept. Drawing on the work of Donna Haraway and Mel Chen, I introduce the notion of the failed encounter to show how loss emerges the moment our becomings are no longer mutually meaningful. Even if others are never quite dead, we produce death when we face the incomprehensible absence of the corpse – the very absence posthuman theory seeks to deconstruct.

- by Simon van der Weele
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- Death, Posthumanism, Performance Art, Critical Posthumanism

Despite its popularity among Early Middle English scholars and scholars of medieval debate literature, The Owl and the Nightingale is relatively inconspicuous in scholarship on medieval race and sexuality. When read alongside later medieval flytings, poetic exchanges of slander focused on the body and its proclivities, the injurious speech in The Owl and the Nightingale operates through racialized and sexualized species division. This article draws on animacy theory and medieval race theory to explore the symbol of the owl-as-Jew in the poem and demonstrates how sexual and racial insult against human beings is filtered through the bodies of animals.

En esta investigación, estudio el impacto del orden canónico de constituyentes oracionales en el procesamiento de oraciones transitivas del español. Para ello realizo una réplica del estudio de Casado et al. (2005), pero, mientras los autores emplean la técnica de potenciales evocados a eventos (ERPs), mi experimento es de tipo conductual y utiliza la técnica de lectura autoadministrada (Self Paced Reading). La comparación de tiempos de lectura de oraciones SVO y OVS del español muestra que las oraciones OVS requieren un mayor costo de procesamiento. Esta dificultad en el procesamiento de estructuras no canónicas del español se ha reportado en estudios de Basilico et al. (1995), Casado et al. (2005) y Del Río et al. (2012). La novedad de mi investigación es que estudio el procesamiento de oraciones transitivas; además, empleo la técnica conductual de lectura autoadministrada. De otro lado, también analizo el impacto de la animacidad en el procesamiento oracional. En mi investigación, los resultados indican que la animacidad del objeto dificulta el procesamiento, lo cual ocurre en los dos órdenes analizados: SVO y OVS. El costo de procesamiento de la animacidad se ha reportado en oraciones relativas en inglés (Weckerly y Kutas, 1999), holandés (Mak et al., 2002, 2006) y español (Del Río et al., 2012). También se detectó el costo del procesamiento de la animacidad en oraciones transitivas del alemán (Grewe et al., 2007). De esta manera, mi estudio replica el efecto de la animacidad en el procesamiento oracional detectado en estudios previos.

- by Natalia Yoza
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- Psycholinguistics, Word order, Animacy, Orden de palabras-Sintaxis Español
- by Julia Watts Belser
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- Cyborg Theory, Feminist Theory, Disability Studies, Performance Studies
- by Raul Aranovich
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- Languages and Linguistics, Syntax, Morphology, Linguistics
- by Leonid Kulikov
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- Syntax, Morphosyntax, Role and Reference Grammar, Animacy

Distinguishing between living (animate) and nonliving (inanimate) things is essential for survival and successful reproduction. Animacy is widely recognized as a foundational dimension, appearing early in development, but its role in remembering is currently unknown. We report two studies suggesting that animacy is a critical mnemonic dimension and is one of the most important item dimensions ultimately controlling retention. Both studies show that animate words are more likely to be recalled than inanimate words, even after the stimulus classes have been equated along other mnemonically relevant dimensions (e.g., imageability and meaningfulness). Mnemonic “tunings” for animacy are easily predicted a priori by a functional-evolutionary analysis.

- by Josh VanArsdall and +1
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- Evolutionary Psychology, Word and Image Studies, Cognitive Linguistics, Episodic Memory
- by Elisabeth Verhoeven
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- Syntax, Linguistics, Word order, Animacy

Abstract: This article theorizes the uneven entanglements between settler processes of ruination, a dynamic structured by regimes of history/prehistory, life/death, and life/nonlife, and “mound power,” or the force-relations exercised by Indigenous landscapes as animate beings in their own right. I draw on research with members of a community in the US South who claim Muskogee ancestry visiting ancestral “mound’ or earthwork and shellwork sites built over the last six thousand years. Wounded by ongoing colonial violence, these landscapes call out to descendants, drawing them into ancestral movements and relations of care. In these moments, ancestral sites refuse to be fixed within terminal chronological periods removed from a settled present, enrolling descendants into Indigenous spacetimes that dramatically exceed colonial timescales and temporalities. Drawing on this deep historical perspective, this article articulates a modest hope for the ways Indigenous landscapes, as agentive beings, animate decolonial possibilities for life in the ruins of colonial empires.

In the article, asymmetries between the use of the 'inanimate' interrogative pronoun "chto" 'what' and the 'animate' "kto" 'who' are addressed. I show that in some constructions, e.g., in questions about the antecedent of the anaphoric pronouns, such as "kogo ego" 'who "him?"', the pronoun "chto" fails to be used for an inanimate antecedent. The reason is that "chto" is grammatically inanimate (its accusative form is the same as in the nominative), while the anaphoric pronoun "on" is grammatically animate (its accusative is distinct from the nominative). The conclusion is that a sort of animacy agreement shows up in constructions like this.

- by Alexander Letuchiy
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- Syntax, Russian Language, Animacy, Wh-interrogatives

We aimed to determine whether semantic relatedness between an incoming word and its preceding context can override expectations based on two types of stored knowledge: real-world knowledge about the specific events and states conveyed by a verb, and the verb's broader selection restrictions on the animacy of its argument. We recorded event-related potentials on post-verbal Agent arguments as participants read and made plausibility judgments about passive English sentences. The N400 evoked by incoming animate Agent arguments that violated expectations based on real-world event/state knowledge, was strongly attenuated when they were semantically related to the context. In contrast, semantic relatedness did not modulate the N400 evoked by inanimate Agent arguments that violated the preceding verb’s animacy selection restrictions. These findings suggest that, under these task and experimental conditions, semantic relatedness can facilitate processing of post-verbal animate arguments that violate specific expectations based on real-world event/state knowledge, but only when the semantic features of these arguments match the coarser- grained animacy restrictions of the verb. Animacy selection restriction violations also evoked a P600 effect, which was not modulated by semantic relatedness, suggesting that it was triggered by propositional impossibility. Together, these data indicate that the brain distinguishes between real-world event/state knowledge and animacy-based selection restrictions during online processing.

- by Martin Paczynski
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- Cognitive Psychology, Semantics, Psycholinguistics, Cognitive Neuropsychology

The article deals with the problem of transformation of animacy and personhood in the situation of Interslavic language contact. The aim of the present paper is to identify what kind of changes category of animacy (personhood) have undergone in several island dialects. This problem is considered on the material of Polish and Czech (primarily immigrant) dialects and Ruthenian idioms that are also in the situation of language island. The data of immigrant dialects were consistently compared with the dialects in the original territory. The data of each idiom were considered against the background of West and East Slavic language landscape. The main trend in the development of the grammar of the island dialect in the surrounding of the closely related language is to level the asymmetry between grammar system of this dialect and the system of dominant language. The ACC.PL=GEN.PL syncretism, that is the main marker of animacy (or of personhood), has a different coverage of vocabulary in Slavic languages. In the island dialects the syncretism tends to spread to those groups of lexemes, for which it is characteristic in the surrounding language. In some idioms the spread of the ACC.PL=GEN.PL syncretism occurs without foreign influence.

- by Ilya Egorov
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- Dialectology, Slavic Languages, Polish, Slavic Linguistics
- by Antonio Fábregas
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- Gender, Adverbs, Phases, Animacy

This study provides a typological analysis of two phenomena related to case-marking in Basque. In both of them, animacy —or the distinction between what is animate and what is not— turns out to be determinant: we discuss case assignment to direct objects, on the one hand, and marking of locative cases, on the other hand. We have compared the two phenomena with diverse typological parallels in order to account for the variety of possible morphological strategies and identify particular conditions and restrictions. Furthermore, we have argued that differential object marking in Basque is a recent phenomenon, induced by language contact, whereas differential locative marking has an intralinguistic nature. Finally, we have defended that the role of animacy in both types of differential marking is different: in the first example it conditions case assignment and in the second it operates as a grammatical gender.

- by Iván Igartua
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- Languages and Linguistics, Contact Linguistics, Basque linguistics, Linguistics

В ряде явлений как нормативного, так и разговорного современного иврита при словоизменении наблюдается вариативность на морфонологическом уровне, не объяснимая известными действующими в языке фонетическими процессами. Так, у относительных прилагательных может быть два вида окончаний для форм ед. ч. ж. р. и мн. ч. м. р.: один набор более употребим, когда речь идет о людях, и тогда прилагательные легко субстантивируются, второй набор характернее при определении неживых объектов. В то же время наблюдается вариативность при образовании форм сопряженного состояния мн. ч. слов именной модели CvC(C)áC, где модельный гласный a сохраняется в словах, называющих, в частности, профессии и качества людей, но редуцируется в других случаях. Практические грамматики и описания иврита не сопоставляют упомянутые явления, хотя имеющиеся данные позволяют видеть именное согласование на основании параметра одушевленности или личности существительного. Иерархия одушевленности, которую можно выстроить благодаря рассматриваемым примерам, в том числе маргинальным (употребление «человеческих» прилагательных не собственно при названиях людей), оказывается соотносимой с типологически распространенными моделями.

- by Sergei Belousov
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- Modern Hebrew Language, Animacy, Современный иврит

This paper is addressed the role of the animacy feature in the Russian grammar, with focus on Russian verbal impersonal constructions and copular structures with non-verbal predicatives. I argue that animacy as the classifying category of Russian nouns (ANIM I) is a scalar feature, while animacy as the restrictive condition blocking ill-formed combinations of syntactic elements in Russian grammatical constructions (ANIM II) is construed as a discrete binary feature.

- by Anton Zimmerling
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- Languages and Linguistics, Syntax, Morphology, Russian Language

Russian collective numerals as means of animacy marking.
The article highlights active processes in the field of Russian numerals. There is no general agreement concerning many uses of collective numerals. A number of regular non-standard modes of usage of collectives is conditioned by its nature suggesting not only the idea of ‘masculinity’ but also ‘person’ and ‘animacy’ in a broad sense.
Статья посвящена активным процессам, происходящим в русской нумеральной системе. Характерная для узуса, но запрещаемая литературной нормой сочетаемость собирательных числительных с названиями лиц женского пола и названиями животных обусловлена семантической связью с идеей персональности и одушевленности в широком смысле.

- by Svetlana Ryabushkina
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- Russian Language, Morphology (Languages And Linguistics), Animacy, Numerals

In addition to its central role in the organization of gender systems and its numerous effects on different parts of the grammar, animacy reveals itself as a significant, sometimes even determinant factor in diachronic processes like the reduction of morphological complexity. Complexity in the realm of inflection may be defined as the extent to which formal distinctions in paradigms are semantically or phonologically unmotivated and therefore largely unpredictable on extramorphological grounds. Animacy and natural (or sex-based) gender emerge in certain cases as features capable of constraining this kind of complexity by offering a transparent semantic criterion that helps substantiate several formal distinctions in languages, thereby reducing the amount of morphological complexity or unpredictability inherited from earlier stages in the evolution of different linguistic systems.

- by David Romand
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- Emotion, Social Cognition, Theory of Mind, Theodor Lipps

Numerals and the category of animacy in polish and croatian/serbian language

- by Adrian Fiedler
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- Slavic Linguistics, Animacy, Polish Language, Numerals
- by Evguenia Malaia and +1
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- Pragmatics, Syntax-Semantics Interface, FMRI, Animacy
- by David Romand
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- Emotion, Social Cognition, Theory of Mind, Intersubjectivity

The question of how we actually arrive at our knowledge of others’ mental
lives is lively debated, and some philosophers defend the idea that mentality is
sometimes accessible to perception. In this paper, a distinction is introduced between
“mind awareness” and “mental state awareness,” and it is argued that the former at
least sometimes belongs to perceptual, rather than cognitive, processing.

- by Somogy Varga
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- Philosophy of Mind, Perception, Social Cognition, Intersubjectivity
- by Marian Klamer and +1
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- Animacy, Papuan Languages, Pronominal system
- by Renata Szczepaniak
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- Historical Linguistics, Low German, Animacy, Graphematics

Many preschoolers know that plants and animals share basic biological properties, but this knowledge does not usually lead them to conclude that plants, like animals, are living things. To resolve this seeming paradox, we hypothesized that preschoolers largely base their judgments of life status on a biological property, capacity for teleological action, but that few preschoolers realize that plants possess this capacity. To test the hypothesis, we taught 5-year-olds one of four biological facts and examined the children's subsequent categorization of life status for numerous animals, plants, and artifacts. As predicted, a large majority of 5-year-olds who learned that both plants and animals, but not artifacts, move in goal-directed ways inferred that both plants and animals, but not artifacts, are alive. These children were considerably more likely to draw this inference than peers who learned that the same plants and animals grow or need water and almost as likely to do so as children who were explicitly told that animals and plants are living things and that artifacts are not. Results also indicated that not all biological properties are extended from familiar animals to plants; some biological properties are first attributed to plants and then extended to animals.

- by John Opfer
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- Cognitive Science, Analogy (Cognitive Psychology), Conceptual change, Categorization

role of animacy and definiteness in the clitic-DP nexus

- by Mary Laughren
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- Spanish, Dative, Animacy, Warlpiri

In this paper, the author explores the variation between the s-genitive and the prepositional construction in Swedish. The study is based on a newly-compiled corpus of contemporary texts. A multivariate analysis based on a binary logistic regression model is conducted to determine, which factors influence the selection of the given construction. The results indicate that animacy has the strongest influence on the genitive variation, and is prior to definiteness and length of the phrase.

- by Alicja Piotrowska
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- Swedish Language, Animacy, Possessive constructions, Binary Logistic Regression

- by Iván Igartua and +1
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- Historical Linguistics, Animacy, Diachronic linguistics, Diachronic Typology

A mediolateral gradation in neural responses for images spanning animals to artificial objects is observed in the ventral temporal cortex (VTC). Which information streams drive this organisation is an ongoing debate. Recently, in Proklova et al. (2016), the visual shape and category (“animacy”) dimensions in a set of stimuli were dissociated using a behavioural measure of visual feature information. fMRI responses revealed a neural cluster (extra-visual animacy cluster - xVAC) which encoded category information unexplained by visual feature information, sug- gesting extra-visual contributions to the organisation in the ventral visual stream. We reassess these findings using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) as models for the ventral visual stream. The visual features developed in the CNN layers can categorise the shape-matched stimuli from Proklova et al. (2016) in contrast to the behavioural measures used in the study. The category organisations in xVAC and VTC are explained to a large degree by the CNN visual feature differences, casting doubt over the suggestion that visual feature differences cannot account for the animacy organisation. To inform the debate further, we designed a set of stimuli with animal images to dissociate the animacy organisation driven by the CNN visual features from the degree of familiarity and agency (thoughtfulness and feelings). Preliminary results from a new fMRI experiment designed to understand the contribution of these non-visual features are presented.

- by Seppo Kittilä and +1
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- Syntax, Linguistic Typology, Animacy, Case Marking

Spanish locative adverbs may be followed by either a prepositional phrase (PP) (e.g. cerca de mí 'close to/(of) me') or, nonstandardly, a tonic possessive (TP) (e.g. cerca mío 'lit. close mine'). Some also take feminine forms (e.g. cerca mía, detrás mía). Using R, I analyze 16,809 tweets representing 14 locatives from Buenos Aires, Madrid, and Mexico City and demonstrate that, although dialects and individual locatives vary widely in their rates of TP use, the person, number, and animacy of the possessor significantly predict PP/TP selection across varieties. Also, feminine possessives are used almost exclusively in Spain, and the seemingly feminine morphology of locatives ending in –a (e.g. encima) and subsequent extension to other locatives via analogy is the most plausible explanation for their use. Further evidence of analogy is TP use in non-locative contexts (e.g. Arg. pensás mío 'you think of me,' Sp. enamorado tuyo/a 'in love with you'). These findings illuminate the interactions between avoidance of ambiguity, form-based analogy, and speakers' conceptualization of possession. My findings regarding animacy, which find parallels in research on English dative and genitive constructions, highlight the utility of both cross-linguistic and cross-constructional comparisons in analyzing morphosyntactic variation.

- by Mark Hoff
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- Spanish, Sociolinguistics, Language Variation and Change, Morphosyntax
- by Evguenia Malaia and +1
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- Syntax/Semantics, Syntax-Semantics Interface, Animacy, Telicity

Language, especially categorization and description through language, is a frequent barrier to collaboration when it comes to collections taken from Native American and Indigenous communities. This impacts collections care within institutions and for the Native people whose relatives and objects are held in those institutions. Drawing on our experiences as NAGPRA and repatriation practitioners, we offer examples of adopting a "language of possibility." Current legal and non-Indigenous institutional nomenclature often assumes that the categories used to describe Indigenous collections are "common sense," and adjustments to that language are often only made after direct intervention from Native American and Indigenous communities. These terms and norms of discourse originate in white, EuroAmerican ideologies of science and scientific classification, and those ideologies are inseparable from their concomitant religious and linguistic systems. Shifting to language that recognizes animacy, or allows for the possibility of it, has the potential to undo this harm before, during, and after consultation and collaboration with Native Nations and Indigenous stakeholders. Language is a site of intervention into non-Indigenous assumptions and practices that not only create barriers to consultation and repatriation, but also directly impact collections care.

- by Jenny L. Davis
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- Terminology, NAGPRA, Animacy, Repatriation

Historical and archaeological records help shed light on the production, ritual practices, and personhood of cult objects characterizing the central Peruvian highlands after ca. AD 200. Colonial accounts indicate that descendant groups made and venerated stone images of esteemed forebears as part of small-scale local funerary cults. Prayers and supplications help illuminate how different artifact forms were seen as honored family members (forebears, elders, parents, siblings). Archaeology, meanwhile, shows the close associations between carved monoliths, tomb repositories, and restricted cult spaces. The converging lines of evidence are consistent with the hypothesis that production of stone images was the purview of family/lineage groups. As the cynosures of cult activity and devotion, the physical forms of ancestor effigies enabled continued physical engagements, which vitalized both the idol and descendant group.

- by Religions (ISSN 2077-1444)
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- Andes, Quechua, Animacy, Funerary culture

This is a revised version of my talk given at the Seminar for Theoretical Semantics, Institute for the Information Transmission Problems (IITP) in Moscow, 26 April, 2019.
I discuss the notion of Animacy as a relevant semantic (s-selective) feature in Modern Russian (and partly, in the history of Russian). I argue that two related but different notions must be kept apart which is often not done in the Russian studies. ANIM I is a classifying category expressed by Russian nominals (nouns, NPs, QPs). ANIM II is a relevant feature of grammatical constructions which can be associated with their arguments (both overt and covert ones). The classifier ANIM I favours a scalar approach. The majority of Russian nominals are specified either as + ANIM I (people, most animals) or --ANIM I, but there is an intermediate zone (some animals) that can be treated either as animate or non-animate (увидел двух рыб ~ увидел две рыбы 'X saw two fishes' ) in some diagnostic contexts. There are no marked and unmarked values with ANIM I, since it is not modeled as a privative feature. Contrariwise, ANIM II is a discrete binary feature that does not need to be cast as a scalar feature. Depending on which entities (different constructions, different groups of predicate lexemes oriented toward different constructions, different semantic roles) are treated as opposed on the basis of ANIM II values, ANIM II is realised as the opposition of the marked + ANIM II value vs the unmarked setting (+/- ANIM II) or as the opposition of the + ANIM II value vs - ANIM II. The former scenario is diagnosed in the opposition of the Agent-like ( - ANIM II) vs Patient (+/- ANIM II) arguments in the transitive impersonal construction (cf. Лодку унесло в морю, Васю унесло в море), in the contrast of verbs like видеть 'see', слышать 'hear', кушать, есть 'eat' (+ANIM II)vs тащить, убить ( +/- ANIM II), and two dative constructions - Dative-Predicative-Structures (+ANIM II, cf. Васе было приятно съездить на дачу) vs Dative-Infinitive-Structures (+/-ANIM II, cf. Двум смертям не бывать, Васе / грузовику здесь не проехать). The second scenario is realized in the opposition of two Russian verbal impersonal constructions -- 3Sg & covert ELEMENTS; - ANIM II, cf. Улицу засыпал-о песком vs 3PL & covert PEOPLE; + ANIM II, cf. Улицу засыпал-и песком.
I also criticize the hypothesis that Modern Russian has a semantic contrast between animate and inanimate accusative forms of nominals and cardinals and argue that this claim is entirely misleading, despite the great names behind the 'animate accusative hypothesis' in the Russian studies. I (not as native speaker but as a linguist) have serious doubts that Modern Russian has something which deserves the tag 'animate paucal construction'. While I accept there is something 'paucal' (i.e. referring to the dedicated uses of the cardinals двух '2' , трех '3', четырех '4' in увидел трех девушек 'X saw three girls), I am concerned by the interpretation of the terms 'animate ' and 'construction in this complex tag. My own guess it that this tag is either due to historical considerations or to the mix of ANIM I and ANIM II.
PS. Part of the argumentation concerning the ANIM II values in Russian impersonal verbal constructions and dative-predicative structures can be found in the printed version of my papers available at academia.edu.
Циммерлинг А.В. 2018b. Имперсональные конструкции и дативно-предикативные структуры в русском языке // Вопросы языкознания. 2018. № 5. С. 7–33. https://www.academia.edu/37559094/
Zimmerling A. Transitive impersonals in Slavic and Germanic // Компьютерная лингвистика и интеллектуальные технологии, выпуск 12 (19). 2013. P. 723-737.
https://www.academia.edu/12928836/Transitive_impersonals_in_Slavic_and_Germanic_zero_subjects_and_thematic_relations

- by Anna Czypionka
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- Languages and Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, German Language, Language Processing