[Lingtyp] animacy hierarchy: exceptions based on shape

[André Müller]

*Sumerian* distinguishes between human and non-human, also called
"Personenklasse" and "Sachklasse" in German-language literature. Pronouns,
question words, possessive agreement depending on the possessee's class,
and also certain case clitics depend on the noun class. Apart from human
beings and gods, the human class also sometimes includes statues (e.g. both
*alan=ani* ‘statue=POSS.3SG.H’ as well as *alan=bi* ‘statue=POSS.3SG.NH’,
both meaning ‘his statue’ can be found in texts), while the words *saĝ*
‘slave’ (lit. ‘head’) and *géme* ‘slave woman’ can also be treated as
non-human (cf. Jagersma 2010:103, Foxvog 2016:22).
But the association of statues with the human class might not be simply due
to shape, but due to them representing actual humans or gods, or simply out
of respect, I imagine. Just like we can refer to a statue as a "he" or
"she" in *English* and many other European languages (but then we would
probably also refer to it by the name, e.g. Leibniz).

Similar with anthropomorph robots (androids) and robots in general if
they're seen as persons instead of machines (ample examples from
science-fiction where people switch from "it" to "he" or "she" upon
realizing that the robot/android/cyborg is actually equal to a human and a
proper individual, I could name at least three *Star Trek: TNG* episodes
here). Even with figurines, plushies and dolls, we would often use a
gendered pronoun if the gender is clear. This is not primarly due to their
shape, I'd argue. An old volleyball with a face painted on it, can become a
"he" if treated as a(n imaginary) friend (cf. *Cast Away*, 2010).

It is difficult to think of an example, where shape is disassociated from
the representation of an object, e.g. a human-shaped ginseng root, a
starfish? Not sure...

*Sources:*
Foxvog, Daniel A. 2016. *Introduction to Sumerian Grammar.* Online
document, UCLA. (https://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlp/cdlp0002_20160104.pdf)
Jagersma, Abraham Hendrik. 2010. *A Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian.*
Doctoral thesis, Leiden: Leiden University. (
https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/16107)

— André Müller
________________________________
PhD Student
Department of Comparative Linuguistics
University of Zurich



Am Mo., 26. Nov. 2018 um 20:27 Uhr schrieb David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>:

> 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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