Animacy: Difference between revisions
(Created page with "{{Wikipedia|animacy}} '''Animacy''' is a grammatical feature that expresses how alive or sentient the referent of a word is, or is viewed as. Toki Pona does not include all of the same animacy markers as English. For example, the English {{w|third-person pronoun}} "it" is '''inanimate''', while alternatives such as "they" are '''animate'''; in Toki Pona, these are all covered by {{tp|ona}}, which does not mark animacy. Similarly, Styles of Toki Pona|in ma...") |
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{{Wikipedia|animacy}} |
{{Wikipedia|animacy}} |
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'''Animacy''' is a [[grammatical]] feature that expresses how alive or sentient the referent of a word is, or is viewed as. |
'''Animacy''' is a [[grammatical]] feature that expresses how [[alive]] or sentient the referent of a word is, or is viewed as. |
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[[Toki Pona]] does not include all of the same animacy markers as English. For example, the English {{w|third-person pronoun}} "it" is '''inanimate''', while alternatives such as "they" are '''animate'''; in Toki Pona, these are all covered by {{tp|[[ona]]}}, which does not mark animacy. |
[[Toki Pona]] does not include all of the same animacy markers as English. For example, the English {{w|third-person pronoun}} "it" is '''inanimate''', while alternatives such as "they" are '''animate'''; in Toki Pona, these are all covered by {{tp|[[ona]]}}, which does not mark animacy. |
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Latest revision as of 14:22, 28 January 2024
Animacy is a grammatical feature that expresses how alive or sentient the referent of a word is, or is viewed as.
Toki Pona does not include all of the same animacy markers as English. For example, the English third-person pronoun "it" is inanimate, while alternatives such as "they" are animate; in Toki Pona, these are all covered by ona, which does not mark animacy.
Similarly, in many speakers' usage, ijo (a generic content word often glossed as "thing") is broad enough to refer to animate and inanimate beings alike, and thus it is not objectifying to classify sentient beings as ijo.
Animacy is conceptually applied to animal words. As a result, some speakers use animacy as a qualifier for whether to describe a sound as mu, which Toki Pona: The Language of Good defines as an animal onomatopoeia.