Animacy: animacy
| Values: | Hum | Nhum |
In Armenian animacy is a lexical feature of nouns and some pronouns. Note that since release 2.3 we distinguish two values, human vs. non-human.
See also the related feature of Definite.
Note also that some school grammars of Armenian distinguish between lexical Hum vs. Nhum or Anim vs. Inan features of nouns. There is antother classifaction: 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 animates that only includes 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 “man”, երեխա “child”, աղջիկ “girl”, ամուսին “husband”, ուսուցիչ “teacher”, նախագահ “president”, տնօրեն “director”
Nhum: non-human
This value in Armenian is used for non-human animates (incl. animals) and inanimates .
Examples
- տարի “year”, օրենք “law”, պետություն “state”, լեռ “mountain”, ծառ “tree”
- ձի “horse”, կով “cow”, առյուծ “lion”, արագիլ “stork”, ձուկ “fish”
Animacy in other languages: [bg] [cs] [hy] [ka] [qpm] [quc] [ru] [sl] [u] [uk] [urb]