animacy
/ˈænɪməsi/
noun
- The quality of being alive, animate, or having life-like properties; often used in linguistics to describe how a language treats nouns based on whether they refer to living things.
- Children learn animacy distinctions early when they sort objects into living and non-living.
- The concept of animacy helps explain why we say 'the dog runs' but not 'the rock runs.'
- In many languages, animacy affects which verbs can be used with a noun.