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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0">Dear David and Tasaku,</p>
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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0"> I am also a native speaker of Japanese, and agree with Tasaku's intuition for most of the part. However, I can totally imagine myself uttering sentence such as "Look! There is Micky Mouse" using
<i>i-ru</i> ("mikki: mausu-ga i-ru!") when I found a tree that cut into the shape of Micky Mouse. I would not say "mikki: mausu-ga a-ru!" in this context. I would consider this Micky Mouse-shaped tree "human-like statue". </p>
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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0"> I would love to hear if Tasaku shares similar intuition as mine. </p>
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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0">Best,</p>
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<div class="PlainText">Kazuha Watanabe<br>
Associate Professor<br>
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures<br>
California State University, Fullerton</div>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of TasakuTsunoda <tasakutsunoda@nifty.com><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, November 27, 2018 5:08 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> David Gil; lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] animacy hierarchy: exceptions based on shape</font>
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<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black">Dear David,</span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black"> I am a native speaker of Japanese.</span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black"> In my idiolect, for
<i>robotto </i>‘robot’, both <i>i-ru </i>and <i>ar-u </i>are acceptable. It seems to me that
<i>i-ru</i> indicates that the robot moves and probably it is moving now, but that
<i>ar-u </i>indicates that the robot does not – and possibly cannot – move for the time being.
</span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black"> Yes, you are right. A human-like statue could never take
<i>i-ru.</i></span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black"> But I am not certain if my intuition is shared by other native speakers of Japanese.</span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black">Best wishes,</span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black"> </span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black">Tasaku Tsunoda</span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black">
</span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:18.0pt; font-family:"‚l‚r ‚oƒSƒVƒbƒN","serif"; color:black"> </span></p>
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<p class="x_MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family:"MS Mincho"; color:black">送信元</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Calibri; color:black">:
</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Calibri; color:black">Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> (David Gil <gil@shh.mpg.de>
</span><span style="font-family:"MS Mincho"; color:black">の代理</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Calibri; color:black">)<br>
</span><b><span style="font-family:"MS Mincho"; color:black">日付</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Calibri; color:black">:
</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Calibri; color:black">2018</span><span style="font-family:"MS Mincho"; color:black">年</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Calibri; color:black">11</span><span style="font-family:"MS Mincho"; color:black">月</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Calibri; color:black">27</span><span style="font-family:"MS Mincho"; color:black">日火曜日</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Calibri; color:black">
4:27<br>
</span><b><span style="font-family:"MS Mincho"; color:black">宛先</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Calibri; color:black">:
</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Calibri; color:black">"lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" <lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
</span><b><span style="font-family:"MS Mincho"; color:black">件名</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Calibri; color:black">:
</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Calibri; color:black">[Lingtyp] animacy hierarchy: exceptions based on shape</span></p>
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<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman""> </span></p>
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<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">I am looking for examples of exceptions to the animacy hierarchy that are motivated by the shape or other spatial configurational properties of the relevant referents.</span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman""> </span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">The animacy hierarchy is primarily of an ontological nature; shape doesn't usually matter. A slug is animate even though its shape is ill-defined and amorphous, while a stone statue
is inanimate even if it represents an identifiable person. </span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman""> </span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">What would such a shape-based exception to the animacy hierachy look like? In Japanese (according to Wikipedia, I hope this is right), there are two verbs of existence,
<i>iru</i> for animates, <i>aru</i> for inanimates, but <i>robotto</i> ('robot') can occur with either of the two: while
<i>iru</i> entails "</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">emphasis on its human-like behavior",
<i>aru</i> entails "emphasis on its status as a nonliving thing". This description seems to suggest that it's the robot's sentience that is of relevance, not its human shape: presumably, even if the robot assumed the form of a sphere with blinking lights,
if its behaviour were sufficiently humanlike it could take <i>iru</i> (speakers of Japanese: is this correct?). On the other hand, I'm guessing that a human-like statue could never take
<i>iru </i>(is this correct?). So if my factual assumptions about Japanese are correct, the distribution of
<i>iru</i> and <i>aru</i> does not offer a shape-based exception to the animacy hierarchy. A bona-fide shape-based exception to the animacy hierarchy would be one in which all human-shaped objects
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial">—</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman""> robots, dolls, statues, whatever
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial">—</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman""> behaved like humans with respect to the relevant grammatical property. Or conversely, a case in which an animate being that somehow managed
to assume the form of a typical inanimate object would be treated as inanimate.</span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial"> </span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">I would like to claim that such shape-based exceptions to the animacy hierarchy simply do not exist, but I am running this past the collective knowledge of LINGTYP members first,
to make sure I'm not missing out on anything.</span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:Arial"> </span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">More generally, it seems to be the case that grammar doesn't really care much about shapes. The closest thing to grammaticalized shape that I can think of is numeral classifiers,
which typically refer to categories such as "elongated object", "small compact object", and so forth. But these straddle the boundary between grammar and lexicon, and, more importantly, are typically organized paradigmatically, rather than hierarchically,
as is the case for animacy categories.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman""></span></p>
<pre><span lang="EN-US">-- </span></pre>
<pre><span lang="EN-US">David Gil</span></pre>
<pre><span lang="EN-US"> </span></pre>
<pre><span lang="EN-US">Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution</span></pre>
<pre><span lang="EN-US">Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History</span></pre>
<pre><span lang="EN-US">Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany</span></pre>
<pre><span lang="EN-US"> </span></pre>
<pre><span lang="EN-US">Email: <a href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de" id="LPlnk579449" class="OWAAutoLink" previewremoved="true">gil@shh.mpg.de</a></span></pre>
<pre><span lang="EN-US">Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834</span></pre>
<pre><span lang="EN-US">Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816</span></pre>
<pre><span lang="EN-US"> </span></pre>
<p class="x_MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">_______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
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