[Lingtyp] animacy hierarchy: exceptions based on shape

[Sebastian Nordhoff]

> David's question would then be: Are there languages that put nouns or
> nominal referents in a human-core class based on their human-like shape?

what would a purely geometrically defined "human-like shape" be?

Something like

\Ö/
 |
/ \

?

If this is the case, would we expect starfish or ginger roots to pattern
with nouns for persons because their shape is not too different?

It would seem that "(potentially) having a soul" would be more important
than geometrical "humanoid" shape.

Having a divergent shape (missing limbs, obesity, immateriality
[divinities]) should not have an influence on the patterning (my guess),
whereas the absence of an /anima/ (e.g. ginger) probably means that we
do not see patterning of the relevant nouns together with the nouns for
"person" etc.

Best wishes
Sebastian







> (though one would have to be careful to distinguish between shape and
> other human-like properties, e.g. active behaviour in the case of
> robots, and passive behaviour in the case of dolls)
> 
> Martin
> 
> 
> On 26.11.18 20:27, David Gil 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
>>
>>
>>
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> 
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