4min chapter

Conlangery Podcast cover image

Conlangery #57: Animacy and Agency

Conlangery Podcast

CHAPTER

Is There a Difference Between Pronouns and Subjects?

In most languages, we just use reflexive pronouns. It turns out this is sensitive to animacy. Basque has a separate intensive marking for first and second person pronouns. Third person pronouns all the way up to inanimate abstractions have a different way of markingintensive. Japanese has g-shin for all animates and pronouns and g-tai for inanimate of all sorts. German has zelpsed for everything, but has no way to do an intensive for abstractions. Spanish uses Mismo, Misma for everything from first person pronoun up to abstraction. So there's a lot of possibility there for some, an animacy hierarchy I had never heard of until a

00:00

Get the Snipd
podcast app

Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
App store bannerPlay store banner

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode