Animacy: animacy
| Values: | Hum | Nhum |
In Armenian, animacy is a lexical feature of nouns and some pronouns. Since release 2.3, we distinguish two values: Hum and Nhum.
See also the related feature of Definite.
Note that some school grammars of Armenian distinguish between lexical Hum vs. Nhum or Anim vs. Inan features of nouns. There is another classification: nouns that are human and inflected as Hum (as obj in Dat) vs. nouns that are animate or inanimate and inflected as Anim (as obj in Dat) vs. nouns that are human, animate or inanimate and inflected as Inan (as obj in Nom/Acc).
Hum: human
A subset of animate nouns that includes only human beings (fictional characters, names of professions, and personified characters), but not animals (there may be exceptions that do not fit the class semantically, but belong to it grammatically).
Examples
- մարդ/mard “man”, երեխա/erexa “child”, աղջիկ/aġǰik “girl”, ամուսին/amowsin “husband”, ուսուցիչ/owsowc’ič “teacher”, նախագահ/naxagah “president”, տնօրեն/tnòren “director”
Nhum: non-human
This value is used for all non-human referents, including both animals and inanimate entities.
Examples
- տարի/tari “year”, օրենք/òrenk’ “law”, պետություն/petowt’yown “state”, լեռ/leṙ “mountain”, ծառ/çaṙ “tree”
- ձի/ji “horse”, կով/kov “cow”, առյուծ/aṙyowç “lion”, արագիլ/aragil “stork”, ձուկ/jowk “fish”
Animacy in other languages: [axm] [bg] [cs] [hy] [ka] [oge] [pal] [qpm] [quc] [ru] [sl] [u] [uk] [urb] [xcl]