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 this book, 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.