# Can a neutral word be inanimate?



## PERSEE

Hello everybody!

I guess this is a naïve question, but I'd like to know if a neutral word in Russian can be inanimate. (I'm helping my beginner daughter with her declensions and I don't want to mislead her.) I looked up _дерево_ in Викисловарь and I saw it was _неодушевлённоe_. So okay, trees have no souls! I can't think of an animal that would be neutral, either.

Thanks for helping.


----------



## gvozd

Your question should be, on the contrary, can a neutral word be *animate*. There are plenty of neutral inanimate words in Russian.


----------



## LilianaB

What do you mean by neutral - gender? Grammatical gender sometimes has nothing to do with real gender in Russian. The tree is in neutral gender but it has nothing to do with the soul. This would be a theological question.


----------



## Maroseika

I don't think there can be animals names having neuter gender in Russian. Even if they have typical neuter ending they all are masculine (e.g. динго - dingo). Animals names with atypical endings are also all masculine (марабу - marabou, аргали aragali). 
However there are some words that are defintely animated and with all that of neuter gender: чадо, дитя, дрянцо (rotter), трепло (gasbag). Not too many of such words, actually.

By the way, soul has sometimes nothing to do with this grammatical category. For example, труп and вирус are unanimated, but покойник and микроб - animated.


----------



## Carrot Ironfoundersson

The word _животное _itself is of neuter gender...


----------



## ahvalj

Das Mädchen is neuter.


----------



## estreets

As far as I remember, the main thing about animate nouns is their form in the accusative case that can coincide with the genitive case for the animate nouns and with the nominative for the inanimate ones.
Except for чадо, дитя, животное, млекопитающее etc., most of neutral nouns are inanimate.
I can hardly recollect any animate besides those above.
Need time to think this over.
And even for those animate nouns their animacy is not perfect, in singular their accusative coincides with the nominative as if they are inanimate.


----------



## ahvalj

estreets said:


> As far as I remember, the main thing about animate nouns is their form in the accusative case that can coincide with the genitive case for the animate nouns and with the nominative for the inanimate ones.
> And even for those animate nouns their animacy is not perfect, in singular their accusative coincides with the nominative as if they are inanimate.


Only in the plural and masculine singular of the 2nd declension. The singular of the 1st and 3rd declensions is not affected.


----------



## estreets

ahvalj said:


> Only in the plural and masculine singular of the 2nd declension. The singular of the 1st and 3rd declensions is not affected.


Sure, it's what I mean by "their animacy is not perfect".


----------



## PERSEE

gvozd said:


> Your question should be, on the contrary, can a neutral word be *animate*. There are plenty of neutral inanimate words in Russian.


Yes, sorry, I meant "animate".


----------



## PERSEE

LilianaB said:


> What do you mean by neutral - gender? Grammatical gender sometimes has nothing to do with real gender in Russian. The tree is in neutral gender but it has nothing to do with the soul. This would be a theological question.


I meant grammatical gender of course.
I'm not so sure it has _nothing_ to do with the soul. An African animist will tell you trees _do_ have souls. For me, not being an animist or even a theologist, it would be a symbolical or simply a poetic question, which doesn't mean it is irrelevant or unimportant. For I example, I tend to consider a tree is more animate than a chair or even a train...


----------



## LilianaB

I think , Persee, it has more to do with the fact whether they eat or produce sounds, rather than whether they have a soul, at least in Russian. A dog is an animate noun in Russian. In some languages it may be inanimate.


----------



## Explorer41

LilianaB said:


> I think , Persee, it has more to do with the fact whether they eat or produce sounds, rather than whether they have a soul, at least in Russian. A dog is an animate noun in Russian. In some languages it may be inanimate.


It mostly has to do with the fact whether they often happen to be subjects of sentences.  The whole thing is to distinguish subjects and objects more easily. It may be a problem, if the Nominative and Accusative cases are the same. Consider, for example, the phrase " 'Запорожец' обогнал 'Мерседес' ".


----------



## morzh

PERSEE said:


> Hello everybody!
> 
> I guess this is a naïve question, but I'd like to know if a neutral word in Russian can be inanimate. (I'm helping my beginner daughter with her declensions and I don't want to mislead her.) I looked up _дерево_ in Викисловарь and I saw it was _неодушевлённоe_. So okay, trees have no souls! I can't think of an animal that would be neutral, either.
> 
> Thanks for helping.




ОК.

1. It is the "NEUTER" gender, not "neutral". When using terminology, try to make sure it is the correct one, otherwise you are risking people not understanding your questions.

2. As already explained here above, there are nouns of neuter gender that are animate, but they are typically not the types, that are animals' names. They may be characteristics, like "трепло" (a rather rude, though not obscene, word for a "yapper" or "talky mctalktalk", a person who talks too much), "дитя/дитятко" (baby), "чудо-юдо" (a monster), etc.

3. Yes, plants are not animates. I remember, I myself was surprised by this, when learning Russian at school, and even tried to argue with my teacher, saying "but plants are alive!", but that would not help, and the plants stayed inanimate.  Alas. What a disrespect.


----------



## PERSEE

morzh said:


> ОК.
> 
> 1. It is the "NEUTER" gender, not "neutral". When using terminology, try to make sure it is the correct one, otherwise you are risking people not understanding your questions.



Sorry about this. My being French should be no excuse for not checking the "technical" terms...


By the way, how can one modify the title of a discussion? In this case, of course, I wish I could change _neutral_ to _neutre_ and _inanimate_ to _animate._


----------



## PERSEE

LilianaB said:


> I think , Persee, it has more to do with the fact whether they eat or produce sounds, rather than whether they have a soul, at least in Russian.


A tree eats, in its own vegetal way... But, granted, bark does _not_ bark!


----------



## morzh

PERSEE said:


> A tree eats, in its own vegetal way... But, granted, bark does _not_ bark!



Well....there are plants that actually have jaw-like structures, that trap insects an actually move from open to close, and digest them. Very animal-like.
Like in the "Little shop of Horrors".
Still, not enough. Even if it does bark


----------



## LilianaB

They probably have to be conscious or at least reactive beings. Who knows what plants understand. Some people say that when you talk to them they grow better. Best.


----------



## morzh

LilianaB said:


> They probably have to be conscious or at least reactive beings. Who knows what plants understand. Some people say that when you talk to them they grow better. Best.



Well, the language allows you to personify a plant, or even a totally inanimate object, like a stone or a car, and it will become animate. And you may then treat it as animate language-wise.


----------



## LilianaB

This is the beauty of language.


----------



## morzh

English allows the same (to the extent that English allows to differentiate between the two). Though it is a simpler language, you can still call your car "she".


----------



## PERSEE

morzh said:


> Well....there are plants that actually have jaw-like structures, that trap insects an actually move from open to close, and digest them. Very animal-like.
> Like in the "Little shop of Horrors".



Quite true! I had forgotten about the dreaded Venus flytrap [in French, dionée attrape-mouches]...
Who knows "her" name in Russian ?


----------



## ahvalj

I think the last posts introduce poetry where it would be better to speak about the shortcoming of the language. All this animate story is just the pragmatic tool to fill the hole that appeared after the Accusative had coincided with the Nominative in some declension types. The language just used the Genitive for the lack of other variants.


----------



## PERSEE

ahvalj said:


> I think the last posts introduce poetry where it would be better to speak about the shortcoming of the language. All this animate story is just the pragmatic tool to fill the hole that appeared after the Accusative had coincided with the Nominative in some declension types. The language just used the Genitive for the lack of other variants.



I'm not sure it is just a "pragmatic" question. In a way, the accusative used for beings "thingifies" them, so there has to be a specific differentiating form. Either it is that of the feminine (у), or of the masculine, in which case the genitive form, as the masculine does not have a specific accusative.

This is at least what a Russian-speaking colleague explained to me. And I tend to believe her, because I know of an another example of it, namely in Spanish. There, the need to differentiate between things and beings in the accusative function (object) translates into something that resembles the Russian solution : the use of the preposition "a" before the object.

Example: Llamé *a* mi primo por teléfono. (I called my cousin on the phone).


----------



## LilianaB

I think it comes from fairy tales and the folk tradition and living close to animals and nature.


----------



## ahvalj

PERSEE said:


> I'm not sure it is just a "pragmatic" question. In a way, the accusative used for beings "thingifies" them, so there has to be a specific differentiating form. Either it is that of the feminine (у), or of the masculine, in which case the genitive form, as the masculine does not have a specific accusative.
> 
> This is at least what a Russian-speaking colleague explained to me. And I tend to believe her, because I know of an another example of it, namely in Spanish. There, the need to differentiate between things and beings in the accusative function (object) translates into something that resembles the Russian solution : the use of the preposition "a" before the object.
> 
> Example: Llamé *a* mi primo por teléfono. (I called my cousin on the phone).


Both Slavic and Spanish met the same problem (and roughly at the same time — around the 5-8th centuries) when the Accusative ending -m (in Latin) and -n (in Slavic) disappeared. Using the preposition (Spanish and Roumanian) or the genitive (Slavic and Ossetic?) was just the easiest way to bypass the shortcoming. Both in Latin and earlier Proto-Slavic there was no such problem at all since in all masculine and feminine nouns the Accusative was different from the Nominative (terra-terram, lupus-lupum, piscis-piscem). I. e., it is a relatively new problem, not something that existed since the dinosaurs.


----------



## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> I think it comes from fairy tales and the folk tradition and living close to animals and nature.


As far as I imagine, many nations have fairy tales and some of these nations even lived once close to animals and nature, but nevertheless the animate/inanimate distinction in declension is peculiar of very few languages in a short historical range. If you mean inanimate words having agreement in gender in English, this is just because English had three genders (m, f, n) until a few centuries ago.


----------



## PERSEE

ahvalj said:


> Both Slavic and Spanish met the same problem (and roughly the same time — around the 5-8th centuries) when the Accusative ending -m (in Latin) and -n (in Slavic) disappeared. Using the preposition (Spanish and Romanian) or the genitive (Slavic and Ossetic?) was just the easiest way to bypass the shortcoming. Both in Latin and earlier Proto-Slavic there was no such problem at all since in all masculine and feminine nouns the Accusative was different from the Nominative (terra-terram, lupus-lupum, piscis-piscem). I. e., it is a relatively new problem, not something that existed since the dinosaurs.



Extremely interesting. I guess it reconciles the poet with the grammarian, especially if they are the same person!

What was this ancient slavic genitive you allude to? Do you have examples?


----------



## ahvalj

PERSEE said:


> What was this ancient slavic genitive you allude to? Do you have examples?


Just the plain genitive. When we say «я вижу человека/людей», we use the Genitive form since the Accusative here would be ambiguous. The origin of this usage most probably comes from negative constructions, where the Genitive is normally used instead of Accusative (less so in the last centuries — we had a discussion about this here some time ago): «я вижу девушку/я не вижу девушки», «я вижу *человек*/я не вижу человека» -> «я вижу *человека*/я не вижу человека». The same thing happened in Ossetic (an Iranian language descendant from the Scythian that was in contact with the Slavic), but in the early Slavic texts of one thousand years ago this usage is still in development. In the Old Novgorod dialect, the only one that preserved the separate Accusative for masculine nouns of the 2nd declension (Nom. Петре, Acc. Петръ), this usage of Genitive was still only occasional.


----------



## Explorer41

morzh said:


> Well, the language allows you to personify a plant, or even a totally inanimate object, like a stone or a car, and it will become animate. And you may then treat it as animate language-wise.


"И я увидел куста, и заговорил с ним. И куст ответил мне: вижу, вижу, о чём думаешь ты...".  I'm sorry, but the situations where you can personify a plant or a car by use of animate forms are greatly restricted. It will be a joke, not a poetic figure proper.

EDIT: I have to note two things:
1) I speak only of Russian here;
2) the story of a bush sounds *very *funny in Russian. Primarily because of the use of the animate form for "куст". The inanimate form of "куст" would make the story neutral, maybe stupid (because of its content; of course, it's stupid anyway).  Normally, when writers want to personify things, they describe them acting like persons act, but still use inanimate forms.


LilianaB said:


> They probably have to be conscious or at least reactive beings. Who knows what plants understand. Some people say that when you talk to them they grow better. Best.


It reminded me of a fantastic story where a computer network was shown to understand human actions and to act itself. As it's natural for that kind of stories, the actions of this computer network were dangerous for humans.


----------



## LilianaB

I somehow cannot imagine referring to animals as _it_ in any language , regardless of any grammar rules.


----------



## LilianaB

What about Stephen King, and the trucks? The bush talks in the Bible.


----------



## ahvalj

A funny thing, there is actually a case when the distinction of animate/inanimate disappeared rather recently. In the 3rd declension, as we all know, the Nom. Sg. always coincides with the Acc. Sg. «мать видит дочь/мышь видит вошь». However, in the Old Russian several words associated with this declension had the Nominative different from the Accusative: Nom. «мати, дъчи, свекры» vs. Acc. «матерь, дъчерь, свекръвь». On one hand this was convenient, on the other, it was not in line with the general rule, so the language sacrificed the convenience to the regularity, and now we have the ambiguous «мать, дочь, свекровь» in both cases.


----------



## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> I somehow cannot imagine referring to animals as _it_ in any language , regardless of any grammar rules.


The very English "it" is a new abstraction, in German "es" is just a neuter pronoun that has nothing to do with the inanimateness. The girl, das Mädchen, is "es".


----------



## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> I somehow cannot imagine referring to animals as _it_ in any language , regardless of any grammar rules.


I can imagine only one case when most languages would distinguish animate vs. inanimate — the opposition who/what. While one can contrast "who is he" vs. "what is he", a stone will always be referred to as "what" (I guess).


----------



## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> The bush talks in the Bible.


A sidenote — have you read this?: http://lib.rus.ec/b/248448/read


----------



## LilianaB

Thank you, Ahvalj. I will read it.


----------



## ahvalj

PERSEE said:


> I know of an another example of it, namely in Spanish. There, the need to differentiate between things and beings in the accusative function (object) translates into something that resembles the Russian solution : the use of the preposition "a" before the object.
> 
> Example: Llamé *a* mi primo por teléfono. (I called my cousin on the phone).


By the way, your example shows how Spanish started to use the Dative for the Accusative in animate objects. «Llamar» with the Dative means «звонить кому-нибудь», while «llamar» with the Accusative means «звать кого-нибудь», this difference is evident with the pronouns that distinguish between both cases: «le llamo» vs. «lo llamo» — so in nouns it was just an easy step from the Dative to the Accusative meaning.


----------



## estreets

morzh41 said:


> Well, the language allows you to personify a plant, or even a totally inanimate object, like a stone or a car, and it will become animate. And you may then treat it as animate language-wise.





Explorer41 said:


> "И я увидел куста, и заговорил с ним. И куст ответил мне: вижу, вижу, о чём думаешь ты...".  I'm sorry, but the situations where you can personify a plant or a car by use of animate forms are greatly restricted. It will be a joke, not a poetic figure proper.


In general it's not that rare. We can see a change in animacy (and in the declension pattern) when say a common name becomes proper (a nickname, for example). Imagine just this:
У него кличка Гвоздь (Куст). Вчера я встретил Гвоздя (Куста) ... и т.д.
So, if one personifies a bush to a degree to name it Куст, it's quite possible to say Я видел Куста (though a nail can be personified more easily )


----------



## Explorer41

*Then* it's not only possible, but obligatory (I speak of nicknames). And I see that you're right: the choice of a declension pattern depends on a meaning of a noun to decline.

Also, I'd say calling someone with a nickname is not so much a way of personifying a nickname as a way of depersonifying a person. So I still think there's no way to personify a thing by use of the animate form without making a joke. Even in fantastic tales normally inanimate nouns are always declined in their inanimate way: for example, if a nail asks Ivan to pick it up, then "Иван поднимет гвоздь".


----------



## rusita preciosa

LilianaB said:


> I somehow cannot imagine referring to animals as _it_ in any language , regardless of any grammar rules.





ahvalj said:


> I can imagine only one case when most languages would distinguish animate vs. inanimate — the opposition who/what. While one can contrast "who is he" vs. "what is he", a stone will always be referred to as "what" (I guess).



I was wondering the same and according to this, seems like it's mostly Russian that uses* who *for both humans and animals; other languages use *what* for animals.


----------



## ahvalj

rusita preciosa said:


> I was wondering the same and according to this, seems like it's mostly Russian that uses* who *for both humans and animals; other languages use *what* for animals.


Yes, indeed, Russian will use "who" for any animal, say in the question «смотри, кто это там?». I don't think, however, it is somehow related to the grammatical animateness in the Accusative — rather, since animals are percepted as animated («кто?»), they get the animate Accusative form when appropriate (plural of all declensions and singular of the 2nd masculine).


----------



## LilianaB

This is beautiful, even for a bee. It is not like that in other Slavic languages, especially in Polish. I do not know other Slavic languages well so I should not form opinions. In Lithuanian who and what is the same: kas. I have heard some people in the United States to refer to a mouse as he, but this is rare.


----------



## ahvalj

LilianaB said:


> In Lithuanian who and what is the same: kas


The modern Lithuanian situation is rather new: the old word for "what" is «kad», preserved now as a conjunction.


----------



## LilianaB

Still people, animals and objects are treated the same. The situation is rather different in Russian since you refer to animals as _who_ even though there is _what_.


----------



## bibax

In Czech the nouns denoting animals (including insect) are animate which is grammatically important only in the masculine gender. For animals we use both _'who'_ (kdo) and _'what'_ (co) pronouns. It depends mostly on personal relation to the animal. For example:
Podívej, *kdo* se vrátil. (smotri, kto věrnulsja.) .... about a dog
Podívej, *co* přiletělo. .... about an insect

The nouns denoting plants are inanimate. However sometimes we use the animate accusative in case of mushrooms:
Našel jsem kozák*a* (ja našël grabovik). Našel jsem choroš*e *(trutovik).


----------



## morzh

bibax said:


> The nouns denoting plants are inanimate. However sometimes we use the animate accusative in case of mushrooms:
> Našel jsem kozák*a* (ja našël grabovik). Našel jsem choroš*e *(trutovik).



Being an avid mushroom hunter myself, I can tell that in Russian it is the same case, but 1) it is strictly colloquial (well, people don't exactly use haut literary Russian style when picking mushrooms) , 2) Not necessarily used by everyone - only by some, and mostly by those who are really into it.

Same examples: "Я подосиновика нашел" / "белого срезал" / "челыша нашел".


----------



## Ben Jamin

gvozd said:


> Your question should be, on the contrary, can a *neutra*l word be animate. There are plenty of neutral inanimate words in Russian.



In grammar it is 'neuter', not neutral.


----------



## morzh

Ben Jamin said:


> In grammar it is 'neuter', not neutral.



Easy to remember. It is what we do to cats and dogs.


----------



## LilianaB

For me a _neutral word_ is more like _politically correc_t.


----------



## Ben Jamin

morzh said:


> Being an avid mushroom hunter myself, I can tell that in Russian it is the same case, but 1) it is strictly colloquial (well, people don't exactly use haut literary Russian style when picking mushrooms) , 2) Not necessarily used by everyone - only by some, and mostly by those who are really into it.
> 
> Same examples: "Я подосиновика нашел" / "белого срезал" / "челыша нашел".


Strangely enough names of mushrooms are consistently animate in Polish. It may be because many of them are formed like names for people (borowik, kozak).


----------



## Ben Jamin

morzh said:


> Being an avid mushroom hunter myself, I can tell that in Russian it is the same case, but 1) it is strictly colloquial (well, people don't exactly use haut literary Russian style when picking mushrooms) , 2) Not necessarily used by everyone - only by some, and mostly by those who are really into it.
> 
> Same examples: "Я подосиновика нашел" / "белого срезал" / "челыша нашел".



Strangely enough names of mushrooms are consistently animate in Polish. It may be because many of them are formed like names for people (borowik, kozak).
But there is also a trend that inanimate nouns are declined like animate nouns.


----------



## Ben Jamin

LilianaB said:


> For me a _neutral word_ is more like _politically correc_t.


What do you mean?


----------



## LilianaB

A neutral word is not a word in neuter gender but a word which is somehow free of any profiling issues or overtones.


----------



## morzh

Ben Jamin said:


> Strangely enough names of mushrooms are consistently animate in Polish. It may be because many of them are formed like names for people (borowik, kozak).
> But there is also a trend that inanimate nouns are declined like animate nouns.



Kozak - I take it, it is colloquial for "kozlarz", which is what we call "подосиновик / подберезовик / обабок" (leccinum).
Borowik - should be the same as Russian "боровик", same as "белый гриб", Boletus Edulis.

Я боровика вижу вон там!
Березовика нашел!

Well, one could indeed make a case for these being animate names, as, for instance, a being living in a forest (лес) - would be "лесовик".

But still those are inanimate names in Russian, that colloquially may be treated by some as animate ones.


----------

