Animacy: Animacy
| Values: | Anim | Inan |
In Classical Armenian, animacy as a lexical feature is tagged on some pronouns and pronominal adjectives ([determiners] (xcl-pos/DET)). It has two values, animate vs. inanimate. Unlike Modern Eastern Armenian, where animacy (Hum vs. Nhum) controls the case of the object (Dat vs. Acc, respectively), the opposed values of animacy are only expressed in pronouns and determiners as such in Classical Armenian. Animacy is not tagged on nominals which do not have dedicated morphological forms to express animate vs. inanimate participants.
Anim: animate
Pronouns and pronominal adjectives referring to animate participants.
Examples
- ով/ov “who”
- ոք/okʻ “anyone”, “any”
- ոմն/omn “someone”, “certain”
Inan: inanimate
Pronouns and pronominal adjectives referring to inanimate participants.
Examples
- զինչ/zinčʻ “what”, “which”
- ինչ/inčʻ “something”, “any”
- իմն/imn “certain”
References
Առաքելեան, Վարագ. 2010. Գրաբարի քերականութիւն. Երևան: Վիամիր․ [Araqelian, Varag. 2010. Grammar of Grabar. Yerevan: Viamir]
Jensen, Hans. 1959. Altarmenische Grammatik. Heidelberg: Winter.
Meillet, Antoine. 1913. Altarmenisches Elementarbuch. Heidelberg: Winters (Internet Archive).
Animacy in other languages: [bg] [cs] [hy] [ka] [qpm] [quc] [ru] [sl] [u] [uk] [urb] [xcl]