Animacy and Reference
A cognitive approach to corpus linguistics
| Doshisha University
The concept of animacy concerns the fundamental and cognitive question of the extent to which we recognize and express living things as saliently human-like or animal-like.
In Animacy and Reference Mutsumi Yamamoto pursues two main objectives: First, to establish a conceptual framework of animacy, and secondly, to explain how the concept of animacy can be reflected in the use of referential expressions. Unlike previous studies on the subject focussing on grammatical manifestations, Animacy and Reference sheds light upon the conceptual properties of animacy itself and its reflection in referential processes.
For the research of this study the author focussed on languages that show completely different tendencies. As a result, English and Japanese parallel corpora are analysed yielding salient observations and opening intriguing discussions.
In Animacy and Reference Mutsumi Yamamoto pursues two main objectives: First, to establish a conceptual framework of animacy, and secondly, to explain how the concept of animacy can be reflected in the use of referential expressions. Unlike previous studies on the subject focussing on grammatical manifestations, Animacy and Reference sheds light upon the conceptual properties of animacy itself and its reflection in referential processes.
For the research of this study the author focussed on languages that show completely different tendencies. As a result, English and Japanese parallel corpora are analysed yielding salient observations and opening intriguing discussions.
[Studies in Language Companion Series, 46] 1999. xviii, 278 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
|
Acknowledgments
|
xi
|
|
List of Abbreviations
|
xiii
|
|
List of Tables
|
xv
|
|
List of Figures
|
xvii
|
|
Introduction
|
1
|
|
A. The General Animacy Scale
|
2
|
|
B. The Hierarchy of Persons
|
3
|
|
C. The Individuation Scale
|
3
|
|
D. Semantic Roles
|
4
|
|
E. Politeness
|
5
|
|
Chapter 1: What is ‘Animacy’?
|
9
|
|
1.1 General Animacy Scale: Humanness, Animacy and Inanimacy
|
9
|
|
1.2 Models of the ‘Animacy Hierarchy’ and Degree of Animacy within Human Category: with Reference to the Hierarchy of Persons and the Individuation Scale
|
24
|
|
1.3 Concluding Remarks
|
36
|
|
Chapter 2: What Does Animacy Do to Human Language?
|
41
|
|
2.1 Overview: With Reference to Number Distinction
|
41
|
|
2.2 Case Marking
|
45
|
|
2.3 Word Order
|
52
|
|
2.4 Subject Selection
|
56
|
|
2.5 Topicality
|
60
|
|
2.6 Towards a Generalisation: ‘Mind-style’ and Structural Salience of Animacy
|
67
|
|
2.7 Concluding Remarks
|
70
|
|
Chapter 3: Hierarchy of Persons and Animacy in English and Japanese
|
73
|
|
3.1 Overview
|
73
|
|
3.2 Some Remarks on the Pragmatic Characteristics of the Hierarchy of Persons
|
74
|
|
3.3 The Japanese Person System
|
76
|
|
3.4 Corpus Analysis and Treatment of Noun Phrases in Texts
|
84
|
|
3.5 First Person
|
95
|
|
3.6 Second Person
|
107
|
|
3.7 Third Person
|
116
|
|
3.8 Concluding Remarks
|
126
|
|
Chapter 4: Degree of Individuation and Encoding of Animacy
|
131
|
|
4.1 Overview
|
131
|
|
4.2 Persons as Individuals vs. Persons as Roles
|
132
|
|
4.3 Organisations: Borderline Cases between Animate and Inanimate Beings
|
138
|
|
4.4 Concluding Remarks
|
146
|
|
Chapter 5: Agency and Animacy
|
147
|
|
5.1 Overview
|
147
|
|
5.2 Agency
|
148
|
|
5.3 Expression and Suppression of Agency and Animacy
|
158
|
|
5.4 Concluding Remarks
|
173
|
|
Chapter 6: A Neverending Story of Animacy
|
177
|
|
6.1 A Neverending Story of Animacy
|
177
|
|
6.2 Concluding Summary — Contribution to Linguistics
|
180
|
|
References
|
183
|
|
Appendix: Lists of Human/Animate Noun Phrases in Corpus
|
197
|
|
Case Study 1: Yukio Mishima, Hyaku-man Yen Senbei (‘One Million Yen Rice Cracker’ or ‘Three Million Yen’)
|
197
|
|
Case Study 2: Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express
|
206
|
|
Case Study 3: Asahi Shinbun and Asahi Evening News
|
215
|
|
Case Study 4: Newsweek
|
225
|
|
Case Study 5: The Transactions of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers and Systems and Computers in Japan
|
235
|
|
Case Study 6: Scientific American
|
244
|
|
Case Study 7: ‘Tetsuko no Heya’
|
253
|
|
Case Study 8: Viewpoints
|
261
|
|
Index
|
269
|
Cited by
Cited by 45 other publications
No author info given
2012.
In Animacies,
► pp. 1 ff. 
No author info given
2012.
In Animacies,
► pp. 23 ff.
No author info given
2012.
In Animacies,
► pp. 57 ff.
No author info given
2012.
In Animacies,
► pp. 89 ff.
No author info given
2012.
In Animacies,
► pp. 127 ff.
No author info given
2012.
In Animacies,
► pp. 159 ff.
No author info given
2012.
In Animacies,
► pp. 189 ff.
No author info given
2012.
In Animacies,
► pp. 223 ff.
No author info given
2012.
In Animacies,
► pp. 239 ff.
No author info given
2012.
In Animacies,
► pp. 261 ff.
No author info given
2021.
In Linguistic Categories, Language Description and Linguistic Typology [Typological Studies in Language, 132],
Caracciolo, Marco, Andrei Ionescu & Ruben Fransoo
2019. Metaphorical patterns in Anthropocene fiction.
Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 28:3 ► pp. 221 ff.
Casaretto, Antje
2012. Zum Verhältnis von Kasusfunktion und Lokalpartikel im Ṛgveda am Beispiel des Akkusativs.
Historical Linguistics 125:1 ► pp. 49 ff.
Comer, Marie, Renata Enghels & Clara Vanderschueren
2016. Measuring the degree of near-synonymy of Spanish verbs of putting.
Functions of Language 23:3 ► pp. 279 ff.
Cordell, Jacqueline
2018. Priming text function in personification allegory: A corpus-assisted approach.
Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 27:3 ► pp. 218 ff.
De Cock, Barbara & Andrea Pizarro Pedraza
2018. From expressing solidarity to mocking on Twitter: Pragmatic functions of hashtags starting with #jesuis across languages.
Language in Society 47:2 ► pp. 197 ff.
Desmet, Timothy, Constantijn De Baecke, Denis Drieghe, Marc Brysbaert & Wietske Vonk
2006. Relative clause attachment in Dutch: On-line comprehension corresponds to corpus frequencies when lexical variables are taken into account.
Language and Cognitive Processes 21:4 ► pp. 453 ff.
Döhla, Hans-Jörg
2014.
In Stability and Divergence in Language Contact [Studies in Language Variation, 16],
► pp. 265 ff.
Esaulova, Yulia, Martina Penke & Sarah Dolscheid
2019. Describing Events: Changes in Eye Movements and Language Production Due to Visual and Conceptual Properties of Scenes.
Frontiers in Psychology 10
Flores Ohlson, Linda
2019. Zombies lost in translation. The translation from English to Spanish of (de)humanizing pronouns.
Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas 14:1 ► pp. 91 ff.
Fukumura, Kumiko & Roger P. G. van Gompel
2011. The effect of animacy on the choice of referring expression.
Language and Cognitive Processes 26:10 ► pp. 1472 ff.
Galicia-Haro, Sofia N. & Alexander F. Gelbukh
2010.
In Text, Speech and Dialogue [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 6231],
► pp. 75 ff.
Gardelle, Laure & Sandrine Sorlin
2018. Introduction.
International Journal of Language and Culture 5:2 ► pp. 133 ff.
Grund, Peter
2011. The Science of Pronominal Usage.
Journal of English Linguistics 39:4 ► pp. 335 ff.
Höglund, Mikko
2014.
In Corpus Interrogation and Grammatical Patterns [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 63],
► pp. 239 ff.
KANERO, JUNKO, KATHY HIRSH-PASEK & ROBERTA MICHNICK GOLINKOFF
2016. Can a microwave heat up coffee? How English- and Japanese-speaking children choose subjects in lexical causative sentences.
Journal of Child Language 43:5 ► pp. 993 ff.
Kibrik, Andrej A., Mariya V. Khudyakova, Grigory B. Dobrov, Anastasia Linnik & Dmitrij A. Zalmanov
2016. Referential Choice: Predictability and Its Limits.
Frontiers in Psychology 7
Krause, Elif
2020.
In Lost in Transmission [Studies in Bilingualism, 59],
► pp. 198 ff.
Krause, Elif & Leah Roberts
2020.
In The Acquisition of Differential Object Marking [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 26],
► pp. 313 ff.
Krause, Elif & Leah Roberts
2020.
In The Acquisition of Differential Object Marking [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 26],
► pp. 313 ff.
Lamers, Monique J. A.
2006. Cracking the Nutshell Differently. Commentary on Mueller.
Language Learning 56 ► pp. 271 ff.
Lamers, Monique J. A. & Peter de Swart
2012.
In Case, Word Order and Prominence [Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, 40],
► pp. 1 ff.
Leung, Janny H. C. & John N. Williams
2014. CROSSLINGUISTIC DIFFERENCES IN IMPLICIT LANGUAGE LEARNING.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition 36:4 ► pp. 733 ff.
Nelson, Diane & Virve-Anneli Vihman
2018. Bringing the toys to life.
International Journal of Language and Culture 5:2 ► pp. 203 ff.
Peltola, Rea
2018. Being perceptible: Animacy, existentiality and intersubjectivity in constructions with the Finnish verbkuulua‘to be perceptible (through hearing)’.
Nordic Journal of Linguistics 41:1 ► pp. 39 ff.
Perera, C. K. & A. K. Srivastava
2016. Animacy-Based Accessibility and Competition in Relative Clause Production in Hindi and Malayalam.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 45:4 ► pp. 915 ff.
RADANOVIĆ, JELENA, CHRIS WESTBURY & PETAR MILIN
2016. Quantifying semantic animacy: How much are words alive?.
Applied Psycholinguistics 37:6 ► pp. 1477 ff.
Rissman, Lilia, Amanda Woodward & Susan Goldin-Meadow
2019. Occluding the face diminishes the conceptual accessibility of an animate agent.
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 34:3 ► pp. 273 ff.
Santazilia, Ekaitz
2020. The two faces of animacy.
Studies in Language 44:4 ► pp. 812 ff.
Sealey, Alison
2018. Animals, animacy and anthropocentrism.
International Journal of Language and Culture 5:2 ► pp. 224 ff.
Shirai, Yasuhiro
2003. Language and thought: methodological issues in cross-linguistic research on ontological categories.
Developmental Science 6:1 ► pp. 26 ff.
Siewierska, Anna
2004.
In Person,
Sullivan, Karen & Sally Butler
2017. Are dead artists’ paintings more lively? – Agency in descriptions of artworks before and after an artist’s death.
<i>WORD</i> 63:3 ► pp. 198 ff.
Sylak-Glassman, John, Christo Kirov, Matt Post, Roger Que & David Yarowsky
2015.
In Systems and Frameworks for Computational Morphology [Communications in Computer and Information Science, 537],
► pp. 72 ff.
Trompenaars, Thijs
2018. Empathy for the inanimate.
Linguistics in the Netherlands 35 ► pp. 125 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 08 february 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
BIC Subject: CF – Linguistics
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General