Animacy: animacy
| Values: | Hum | Nhum |
In Western Armenian, animacy is a lexical feature of nouns and some pronouns. We distinguish two values: Hum and Nhum.
See also the related feature of Definite.
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”, երեխայ/erexay “child”, տղայ/tġay “boy”, էրիկ/ērik “husband”, ուսուցիչ/owsowc’ič “teacher”, թագաւոր/t’agawor “king”, պայլ/payl “prince”
Nhum: non-human
This value is used for all non-human referents, including both animals and inanimate entities.
Examples
- տարի/tari “year”, յօդուած/yòdowaç “article”, լեռ/leṙ “mountain”, ծառ/çaṙ “tree”
- ձի/ji “horse”, կով/kov “cow”, առիւծ/aṙiwç “lion”, ձուկ/jowk “fish”
Animacy in other languages: [axm] [bg] [cs] [hy] [hyw] [ka] [oge] [pal] [qpm] [quc] [ru] [sl] [u] [uk] [urb] [xcl]