[Lingtyp] animacy hierarchy: exceptions based on shape

[David Gil]

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.

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.

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, /iru/ for animates, /aru/ for inanimates, 
but /robotto/ ('robot') can occur with either of the two: while /iru/ 
entails "emphasis on its human-like behavior", /aru/ 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 /iru/ (speakers of Japanese: is this correct?).On the other hand, 
I'm guessing that a human-like statue could never take /iru /(is this 
correct?).So if my factual assumptions about Japanese are correct, the 
distribution of /iru/ and /aru/ 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 — 
robots, dolls, statues, whatever — 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.

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.

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.

-- 
David Gil

Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany

Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816

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