[Lingtyp] animacy hierarchy: exceptions based on shape

Tue Nov 27 09:56:34 UTC 2018

Ancient Greek and Sanskrit made a difference with reference to the same ‘substantia’ according to whether it was thought of as animate (mostly a divinity) or as inanimate. Cp. Lat. ignis, Skt. Agnih  (masc.) vs.  Gk. pyr (ntr.); Gk. Oneiros “Dream”(masc.) vs. onar “sleep” (ntr), etc.

Paolo

Prof.Paolo Ramat
Università di Pavia (retired)
Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori (IUSS Pavia, retired)
Societas Linguist. Europ., Honorary Member
Academia Europaea

Piazzetta Arduino 11
I – 27100 Pavia
##39 347 044 98 44 (port.)
##39 0382 27 0 27 (home)
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
From: Eitan Grossman 
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2018 7:22 AM
To: Amina Mettouchi 
Cc: LINGTYP 
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] animacy hierarchy: exceptions based on shape

Hi all, hi David! 

I would think that overt grammatical categories largely reflect what speakers talk about frequently in particular usage contexts (à la Du Bois 'grammars code best what speakers do most' or Bybee's ideas about the emergence of constituent structure). 

So what would the precursors be for a grammaticalized category of shape? One might find some ideas by looking at the collocational properties of shape-denoting terms in corpora of different languages, and also some clues about why they don't develop into a grammatical category of 'shape.' Maybe they don't have the right frequency properties - say, a small but very frequent class of shape terms co-occurring frequently with a large class of something else). A look into corpora might also give some clues as to why they do end up entering into constructions that they do enter into, like compounds.

Eitan

Eitan

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 8:05 AM Amina Mettouchi <aminamettouchi at me.com> wrote:

  Hi David, would Thomas the Tank Engine bring something to your reflection on animacy hierarchy ? 
  https://goo.gl/images/yGy2mN
  It seems to me that languages are much less driven by what looks like real-world constraints on animacy than we think, having in mind the kind of language used in standard descriptive utterances among adults in western societies. What looks like violations (speaking to your computer, thinking that this special gift from your departed grandma protects you, reassuring your child that their teddy bear is not hurt etc) might just be evidence for the fact that animacy is an attribute, not an inalienable property of référents themselves (therefore that it is what we predicate of entities that makes them animate or not): a possible caption to the linked picture would be : Thomas the tank engine was so proud that the mayor of London had organized a welcome ceremony for him in Victoria station. 
  And if this type of language use falls out of the scope of your enquiry, I guess looking at texts describing shamanic practice, or referring to animism or totemism by culturally-anchored speakers  of the corresponding languages would be relevant ?
  Best
  Amina

  On 27 Nov 2018, at 06:12, Randy J. LaPolla <randy.lapolla at gmail.com> wrote:

    Hi David, 
    In English the use of “inanimate” it as opposed to animate he or she is based to a large extent on familiarity with the gender of the referent, so babies where one doesn’t yet know the gender, or bugs and slugs, etc., where it doesn’t matter, take it because the use of he or she would require the person to know the gender/sex of the referent, though in some cases one can use an unmarked conventionalised gender for some animals.

    All the best,
    Randy

    ----- 
    Randy J. LaPolla, PhD FAHA （羅仁地）
    Professor of Linguistics, with courtesy appointment in Chinese, School of Humanities 
    Nanyang Technological University
    HSS-03-45, 14 Nanyang Drive | Singapore 637332
    http://randylapolla.net/
    Most recent books:
    The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 2nd Edition (2017)
    https://www.routledge.com/The-Sino-Tibetan-Languages-2nd-Edition/LaPolla-Thurgood/p/book/9781138783324
    Sino-Tibetan Linguistics (2018)
    https://www.routledge.com/Sino-Tibetan-Linguistics/LaPolla/p/book/9780415577397

      On 27 Nov 2018, at 3:27 AM, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:

      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

_______________________________________________
      Lingtyp mailing list
      Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
      http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

    _______________________________________________
    Lingtyp mailing list
    Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
    http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

  _______________________________________________
  Lingtyp mailing list
  Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
  http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20181127/e4b8bdb5/attachment.htm>