Animacy: animacy
| Values: | Anim | Inan |
Animacy is a lexical feature of nouns. In Georgian the category of animacy does not have special morphological markers, but it affects verbal number agreement at the syntactic level, in that plural number agreement occurs obligatorily in the case of animate nominals bearing the -ებ-, -ნ and -თ- plural markers and very rarely in the case of inanimate NPs bearing the -ებ- marker; mainly, human is animate, nonhuman - inanimate. The principal rule followed by verbs with regard to number agreement is that an animate agent is prevails over an inanimate.
The Animacy feature applies to NOUN and PROPN.
Anim: animate nouns.
Human beings, animals, fictional characters, names of professions etc. are normally animate.
Examples
- ამხანაგი ჩემზე უკეთ სწავლობს ‘My friend studies better than me’
Inan: inanimate nouns.
Nouns that are not animate are inanimate.
Examples
- ჩანთა დევს მაგიდაზე ‘The bag lies on the table’
Animacy in other languages: [bg] [cs] [hy] [ka] [qpm] [quc] [ru] [sl] [u] [uk] [urb]