Do some Slavic languages have an "extra" gender distinction for animate nouns?

Question

I seem to recall hearing and reading that certain Slavic languages including Czech treat animate nouns as something like an extra gender. Even Wikipedia in some places counts more than three genders for some Slavic languages (or used to, I will have to check for the current state of play).

For instance here is one such quote from Wikipedia:

Another example is Polish, which can be said to distinguish five genders: personal masculine (referring to male humans), animate non-personal masculine, inanimate masculine, feminine, and neuter.

Is this the case or is it more complex than that? I think I've heard it described as having three and a half genders too. How is this like and unlike gender and is it sometimes described as being another gender outside linguistics circles or do I have even that wrong?

(Note that I'm specifically asking about nouns so please don't submit answers about pronouns)

Answer 1

(Amended per comments)

AFAICT, in Czech, the animate/inanimate distinction is considered as a kind of “sub-gender” specification for the masculine gender. Usually you need to distinguish only m/f/n, but in a few cases, the masculine gender needs to be differentiated to animate/inanimate.

Masculine animate nouns have the singular accusative different from the singular nominative (e.g. man: nom muž, acc muže) while inanimate nouns have accusative identical to nominative (e.g. castle: nom hrad, acc hrad). This is the difference native speakers use to recognize noun animacy (and choose the correct declension paradigm). Furthermore, there are differences in singular dative and locative (e.g. mužovi vs. hradu), and plural nominative (e.g. muži vs. hrady).

The most important aspect affected by animacy is the third-person plural past verb form: the inanimate nouns are treated almost like feminines, e.g. muži byli (“men were”), while hrady byly (similarily to ženy byly = “women were”).

We have four declension paradigms for animate masculine nouns and two for inanimate masculine nouns, however, they are usually listed together and mixed (“pán, hrad, muž, stroj, předseda, soudce”, where hrad and stroj are those inanimate). So, in general usage, the animacy is definitely not on the same level of importance as gender.

As for the “assignment” of animacy to nouns, it is generally true that animate nouns correspond to live beings, while abstract concepts and non-living entities correspond to inanimate nouns. But there are exceptions to this rule. Plants (e.g. strom = tree) and collective nouns (hmyz = insect) are inanimate, and a non-living, yet human-like snowman (sněhulák), or a by-definition-deceased nebožtík are animate.

Then we have several classes of nouns which may be used either as animate or inanimate. Some of them according to the speaker’s style choice: Nouns ending with -tel or -ec (e.g. ledoborec = icebreaker) can use ledoborci vypluli, or ledoborce vypluly (choosing the noun variant and then the corresponding verb inflection), similarly with a few other small sets of nouns.

Then there are nouns which are animate or inanimate according to the specific real-world meaning, e.g. sběrač, which might mean a gatherer (a person gathering something), or a pantograph (a device collecting something), and according to the meaning, it is animate (“sběrači měli plné košíky” – “gatherers had their baskets full”), or inanimate (“sběrače měly poruchu” = “collectors were broken”). An interesting word in this regard is robot (you might be aware that it is originally Czech, invented by Josef Čapek for his brother’s theatrical play R.U.R.): it might be either animate (humanoid, intelligent robots), or inanimate (dumb machines, e.g. a kitchen robot).

For some nouns, you can also use animate declension expressively, e.g. (“dám si ruma” = “I’ll have a rum”, even though rum is normally inanimate, so “dám si rum” is the basic usage).

Answer 2

It all depends on what you include in your definition of "grammatical gender." Let me esplain. No, there is too much; let me sum up: Grammatical gender or noun class is a grouping of nouns that are morphologically marked in the same way. What morphological changes do these words suffer when I want to say x? Gender is separate from case, though, which is the morphological markers that tell how a noun (and adjectives, et al) function in a sentence.

Like you said, Polish has essentially five noun classes, but it's really three components that make up this grammatical gender: gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), personhood (personal, non-personal) and animacy (animate, inanimate) -- but personhood and animacy only affect the masculine gender resulting in what looks like five noun classes, the ones listed in the question.

Note that "grammatical gender" is not necessarily related to gender/sex in the real world -- and grammatical animacy does not always match real world animacy either. These terms are used only to designate classes of words that take certain inflections. Of course, there is usually a lot of semantic overlap between grammatical gender and real world sex and gender roles.

It's all in how you name things. For most Indo-European languages, I think it's easiest to group gender, personhood and animacy together into the idea of "gender" or "noun class." In fact, some hypothesize that PIE originally distinguished between animate and inanimate nouns, then the animate group distinguished between masculine and feminine. It explains the masculine/feminine/neuter paradigm.

Other languages address things like gender, animacy and personhood in different ways: Navajo uses word order to rank animacy of nouns in a sentence. Japanese uses a different existential/possessive verb for animate or inanimate nouns. Arabic marks gender on pronouns, which means in the 2nd person, the form changes depending on who you're speaking to. Animacy affects ergative languages in different ways, depending on where the language draws its line in the hierarchy of animacy.

Answer 3

I'll consider Russian because it's the one I know better.

The Russian language has the animate/inanimate distinction, but it's rather a noun category than another gender. Russian has only 3 genders: Masculine, feminine and neuter. Such distinction affects the nouns' inflection when they are in the accusative case. The nouns, in this situation, follow this scheme.

I'll only treat about the accusative singular (Otherwise the answer gets too long):

• The masculine is the only one that has actual changes concerning the animate/inanimate:

Animate:

1. Студент -> СтудентА _{(= Student)}
2. Учитель -> УчителЯ _{(= Teacher)}

Inanimate:

1. Дом -> Дом _{(= House)}
2. Музей -> Музей _{(= Museum)}

• The feminine goes to the accusative:

1. Машина -> МашинУ _{(= Car)}
2. Тётя -> ТётЮ _{(= Aunt)}
   
   ...but it has an exception for nouns ending with -ь:
3. Мать -> Мать _{(= Mother)}

• The neuter doesn't change:

1. Окно -> Окно _{(= Window)}
2. Море -> Море _{(= Sea)}

I am not sure this is what you were looking for, but I hope it helps.

Answer 4

I've never heard about distinction between personal and non-personal masculine/feminine as separate genders, however it's quite interesting to learn that people from outside can see it that way.

The example from the Wikipedia is a bit doubtful, because it gives as an example the nouns with other endings, and those decline in other way. But taking as example words with the same ending:

• kot - a cat, widzę kota - I see a cat
• płot - a fence - widzę płot - I see a fence

However, if we have a surname "Płot", there will be:

• Widzę pana Płota - I see mr. Fence

So, some nouns decline in the other way for animate and non-animate nouns. This is, however, not called in Polish grammar gender.