[Lingtyp] animacy hierarchy: exceptions based on shape

[TasakuTsunoda]

Dear Kazuha,

 

    Regarding “mikki: mausu-ga i-ru!”

 

    This is difficult. i-ru may be OK, but it does not seem to sound perfectly right.

    ar-u may be OK, but it seems to sound less good than i-ru.

    My tentative conclusion is as follows: neither i-ru nor ar-u sounds perfectly right, but i-ru seems to sound better than ar-u.

 

Best wishes,

 

Tasaku Tsunoda

 

送信元: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> ("Watanabe, Kazuha" <kwatanabe at fullerton.edu> の代理)
日付: 2018年11月28日水曜日 1:53
宛先: "lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org" <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
件名: Re: [Lingtyp] animacy hierarchy: exceptions based on shape

 

Dear David and Tasaku,

 

  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-ru ("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".  

 

  I would love to hear if Tasaku shares similar intuition as mine.  

 

Best,

 

Kazuha Watanabe
Associate Professor
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
California State University, Fullerton

 

From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of TasakuTsunoda <tasakutsunoda at nifty.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2018 5:08 AM
To: David Gil; lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] animacy hierarchy: exceptions based on shape 

 

Dear David,

 

    I am a native speaker of Japanese.

 

    In my idiolect, for robotto ‘robot’, both i-ru and ar-u are acceptable. It seems to me that i-ru indicates that the robot moves and probably it is moving now, but that ar-u indicates that the robot does not – and possibly cannot – move for the time being. 

    

    Yes, you are right. A human-like statue could never take i-ru.

 

    But I am not certain if my intuition is shared by other native speakers of Japanese.

 

Best wishes,

 

Tasaku Tsunoda

    

 

送信元: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> (David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> の代理)
日付: 2018年11月27日火曜日 4:27
宛先: "lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org" <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
件名: [Lingtyp] animacy hierarchy: exceptions based on shape

 

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
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