animacy

English

Etymology

animate + -cy

Noun

animacy (usually uncountable, plural animacies)

  1. (linguistics) In some languages, the characteristic of a noun, dependent on its living or sentient nature, which affects grammatical features (it can modify verbs used with the noun, affect the noun's declension, etc.).
  2. (biology) The state of being alive.
    • 2011, Seppo Kittilä, Katya Västi, Jussi Ylikoski, Case, Animacy and Semantic Roles, page 6:
      These may differ radically in their linguistic animacy, as briefly discussed above, without this having any consequences for their biological animacy.

Antonyms

Translations

Anagrams

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.