The category of animacy and its acquisition in the grammars of Russian and Spanish

Abstract

The category of animacy is the expression in grammar of the opposition between animate and inanimate beings. This category does not grammaticalize in every language and, even if it does, it almost never grammaticalizes in the same way. To show this, I will analyze here the animacy effects in two languages, which seem to grammaticalize in similar ways (Spanish and Russian). In these two languages, animacy mainly affects differential object marking (the so-called DOM). Unlike other European languages, both Russian and Spanish make use of DOM for animate objects (Veo a mi amigo / Я вижу своего друга), but there are independent factors that distinguish the Russian and the Spanish patterns. Having in mind the difficulties that learners of Russian and Spanish must face, I will offer a brief comparative of the acquisition of the DOM in these two languages by different types of speakers (speakers of L1, heritage language speakers and speakers of L2).