Animacy
Animacy is a grammatical and/or semantic category of nouns based on how sentient or alive the referent of the noun in a given taxonomic scheme is.
Hilinqwo generally is not concerned with animacy. However, Hilinqwo does recognize the following forms of animacy:
- Personhood1
- Animality
- Biologicality
- Inanimacy
The following rules concerning animacy do apply.
- Gender: If an element has gender, it is assumed to have either personhood or animality.
- The biological class of elements carry the animacy of the denoted species. Animals are more animate than plants, etc.
- The chemical class of elements are understood to be inanimate.
- Absent any of these conditions, the animacy of an element is undefined.