This involves both animates and inanimates, though animates are usually identifiable by meaning too.
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Moreover, the Wuvulu language has different numerical systems for animate objects and inanimates objects.
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The indefinite article is -ek for animates and -ak for inanimates. The indefinite article exists only in the singular, where its absence marks definiteness. In the plural, (in)definiteness does not receive special marking.
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The inanimates have special noun affixes which mark them as either inorganic (-na) or organic (-ga). The augmentative is -ta- and the diminutive is -ko-. The approbative is marked by -xa and the disapprobative is marked by -ze.
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At the opposite end are inert inanimates, which are neither animal nor able to move on their own. Between both ends of the scale is a gradient of things that vary in animacy, such as dolls and vehicles.
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We want an accountant who we can count on.' (an accountant on whom we can count) : Nos vole un contabile que le policia non perseque. 'We want an accountant whom the police are not pursuing.' For inanimates, que covers both the nominative and oblique cases.
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Animates are thought of and referred to as 'he' or 'she' (and rarely 'it'). :Inanimates are genderless in Modern English (not neuter). They have no sex, so they have no gender, and are thought of and referred to as 'it'. This is the essence of the Modern English gender system.
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Note that the vast majority of nouns are inanimates and so do not have gender at all. From the same animate/inanimate premise, grammatical gender systems operate on either a two-way gender system (masculine and feminine – as in Welsh and French), or a three-way system (masculine, feminine, and neuter – as in German, Russian or Old English). In either case, the fundamental principle is that all nouns are assigned a gender, and on this principle the classification process is as follows: :Animates are usually (not always) assigned grammatical gender according to sex – therefore they will be masculine or feminine as in a natural gender system. :Inanimates must be assigned gender, which cannot be done by the criterion of sex (as they have none), so it is done more-or-less seemingly arbitrarily, with both or all three genders represented.
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Wanano is a nominative accusative language with an SOV sentence structure that contains the following grammatical categories: nouns, verbs, particles, pronouns, and interrogatives. These are outlined in Stenzel’s Reference Grammar of Wanano (2004). Under nouns Stenzel goes into further detail regarding the animates: human vs non-human animates and inanimates: mass nouns vs count nouns (xi). Stenzel discusses the pronouns which will be examined further below.
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Most nominals of this class are female animates, different kinds of axes, the sun, as well as for most smaller songbirds, and many unusual animals. Examples include nambiliju "female body," dardawurni "axe" and lirrikbirni "cockatoo." The characteristic ending for masculine nominals is -a, although a lot of masculine nominals also end in a consonant. Most nominals of this class are animates, although it also contains a number of flat or rounded inanimates.
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Nouns exist in two numbers, singular and plural. Most plural forms are formed with the addition of a suffix, often -ed for animate nouns and -(i)où, for inanimates, for example, Breton "Breton", Bretoned "Bretons"; levr "book", levroù "books". Other suffixes also occur, for example, Saoz "Englishman", Saozaon "Englishmen". A few nouns form their plural via vowel alternation, such as kastell "castle", kestell "castles"; maen "stone", mein "stones", while others are irregular, like den "person", tud "people"; ki "dog", chas "dogs".
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Proto-Anatolian retained the nominal case system of Proto-Indo-European, including the vocative, nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, genitive, and locative cases, and innovated an additional allative case. Nouns distinguish singular and plural numbers, as well as a collective plural for inanimates in Old Hittite and remnant dual forms for natural pairs. The Anatolian branch also has a split-ergative system based on gender, with inanimate nouns being marked in the ergative case when the subject of a transitive verb. This may be an areal influence from nearby non-IE ergative languages like Hurrian.
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Historically the -s possessive has been used for animate nouns, whereas the of possessive has been reserved for inanimate nouns. Today this distinction is less clear, and many speakers use -s also with inanimates. Orthographically the possessive -s is separated from the noun root with an apostrophe. Possessive constructions: : With -s: The woman's husband's child : With of: The child of the husband of the woman Nouns can form noun phrases (NPs) where they are the syntactic head of the words that depend on them such as determiners, quantifiers, conjunctions or adjectives.
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Although nouns can be masculine or feminine, there is usually no particular marker that indicates the gender. Many singular feminine human nouns are marked by the ending -sù, whereas some singular masculine human nouns end in -é. Additionally, definite human feminine nouns must be marked with the suffix -sù, often repeating marking: : Gender assignment for most non-human animates as well as inanimates is largely unpredictable. However, according to Steeman (2011), all body parts are masculine, bigger plants are masculine while smaller plants are feminine, machinery nouns new to the Sandawe (whose names are typically borrowed from Swahili) are usually feminine, and deverbal nouns representing acts (nominalizations) are masculine.
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Nonetheless, pronouns continued to distinguish between the grammatical genders for some time, as han referred to nouns of the masculine gender, and likewise hun (Da.) / hon (Swedish) was used for nouns of the feminine gender. In the Early Modern period, this last distinction disappeared as well, as inanimates and beings perceived as lacking biological gender came to be referred to with a new pronoun den ("it"), originally a demonstrative meaning "that", whereas han and hun were now reserved only for beings perceived as having biological gender, like English he and she. Other dialects kept the gender distinction in the definite suffixes, like Insular Danish, where only the feminine suffix became -en while masculine form lost the n and became -i (dawi - the day, katti - the cat), or Norwegian and most Swedish dialects where the masculine definite suffix became -en, but feminine lost the n and became -a (mora -- the mother).
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