Animacy hierarchy

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The Animacy Hierarchy or Nominal Hierarchy is a scale of noun phrases' relative animacy or capability to function as agent of a sentence. Categories higher in the hierarchy are more animate/agental and categories lower in the hierarchy are less animate/agental:

first person, second person

third person

personal name/kin term

human

animate

inanimate

In languages with split ergativity categories towards the top of the hierarchy are most likely to have nominative- accusative case marking while items towards the bottom are most likely to have ergative-absolutive case marking. Again there are no known languages that violate the hierarchy, i.e. having ergative-absolutive marking on first/secondperson pronouns and nominative- accusative marking on inanimates. Languages differ with regard to where in the hierarchy they draw the border, but they do not violate the hierarchy.

This article is part of a series on Grammar and Syntax. (Click to View) Grammar: Accusative absolute * Animacy Hierarchy * Aspect * Degrees of volition * Dual * Fluid-S * Mood * Nouns * Number * Person * Pro-Drop * Pronouns * Suffixaufnahme * Tense * Word order Syntax: Morphology * Morphological type * Morphosyntactic alignment * Nominative absolute * OSV * OVS * SOV * SVO * VOS * VSO