English Grammar Understanding the Basics - Evelyn P. Altenberg, Robert M. Vago 2010
Lesson 4: Animate and inanimate nouns
Unit 1: Identifying nouns
Part I: Kinds of words
Take a look at the following sentence:
1. The postcard saw the mailman.
What’s strange about this sentence? What’s strange is that we don’t expect a postcard, which is not alive, to be able to see something; only things that are alive have the ability to see. Nouns that refer to things that are alive are called animate, while nouns that refer to things that are not alive are called inanimate. Postcard is an inanimate noun and using it as an animate one makes for a very unusual sentence.
Quick tip 4.1
Animate nouns refer to things that are alive; inanimate nouns refer to things that are not alive.
Test yourself 4.1
Decide if each noun is animate or inanimate.
Sample: apple inanimate
Getting started (answers on p. 21)
1. word
2. lizard
3. glasses
4. calendar
5. baby
More practice (answers on the website)
6. criminal
7. furniture
8. doctor
9. mouse
10. truck
Now take a look at the following sentence:
2. The dog wrote a best-selling novel.
Again, there’s something strange here. We know that dog is animate. However, only a special type of animate noun has the ability to write a best-selling novel: a human noun. The following sentence is fine, since teacher is a human animate noun: My teacher wrote a best-selling novel. On the other hand, since dog is a nonhuman animate noun, sentence 2 does not sound right.
To summarize: nouns may be human animate (teacher), nonhuman animate (dog), or inanimate (postcard).
Test yourself 4.2
Decide if each noun is animate or inanimate. If a noun is animate, decide if it is human or nonhuman.
Sample: chair inanimate
Getting started (answers on p. 21)
1. dinner
2. pet
3. friend
4. child
5. spider
More practice (answers on the website)
6. tablecloth
7. recipes
8. assassin
9. shark
10. freedom