From Inanimacy to Animacy

Abstract

The masculine animate/inanimate classification is a general characteristic of Croatian and other Slavonic languages (except Bulgarian and Macedonian). In this classification there are two types of case syncretism: genitive-accusative syncretism conditioned by animacy of the noun and nominative-accusative syncretism conditioned by inanimacy of the noun. Using the examples extracted from everyday speech, this paper deals with inanimate masculines which do not follow prototype nominative-accusative patterns and strives to elucidate semantic and lexical conditions for their gramaticalanimacy, discernible in genitive-accusative syncretism.

Keywords

• genitive-accusative syncretism
• nominative-accusative syncretism
• animacy
• inanimacy
• masculines