Animating the narrow syntax

Abstract

In this paper we demonstrate that there are two related, but distinct types of animacy in the Plains Algonquian language, Blackfoot-morphological animacy (m-animacy) and high animacy (H-animacy). We argue that the two types of animacy are constructed in different ways: M-animacy is a head feature that determines noun class and plays a role in syntactic agreement operations, whereas H-animacy is a selectable feature of arguments. The two kinds of animacy also have different distributions: Only languages that have animacy-based form classes have m-animate nominals, but H-animate nominals are universal because all languages have predicates that select for high animates. We discuss empirical differences between m-animate and H-animate nominals that are intended to serve as diagnostics for the exploration of animacy in other languages.