The language of an inanimate narrator

Abstract

We show by means of a corpus study that the language used by the inanimate first person narrator in the novel Specht en zoon deviates from what we would expect on the basis of the fact that the narrator is inanimate, but at the same time also differs from the language of a human narrator in the novel De wijde blik on several linguistic dimensions. Whereas the human narrator is associated strongly with action verbs, preferring the Agent role, the inanimate narrator is much more limited to the Experiencer role, predominantly associated with cognition and sensory verbs. Our results show that animacy as a linguistic concept may be refined by taking into account the myriad ways in which an entity’s conceptual animacy may be expressed: we accept the conceptual animacy of the inanimate narrator despite its inability to act on its environment, showing this need not be a requirement for animacy.

Parameters of Narrative Perspectivization: The Narrator

“…5f.] Trompenaars et al (2018) have shown that if (homodiegetic) narrators are "not a prototypical animate entity, lacking agentive properties", their animacy is nevertheless presupposed by the use of pronouns, grammatical functions and voice (Trompenaars et al, 2018: 719). Conceptual inanimate narrators are thus treated grammatically as animate "tellers".…”

“…a referent "to whom all expressive elements are attributed"; see Banfield, 1973: 29, andBanfield, 1982: 93), 1 since only animate beings are capable of speaking and perceiving. It would thus not be reasonable to refer to the perspective of an object like a stone, unless it is anthropomorphized as a conscious observer within a story (see Richardson, 2006, for "unnatural" narratives, andTrompenaars et al, 2018, on the linguistic animacy features of "inanimate narrators"). Furthermore, many accounts rely on the assumption that every story presupposes an act of narration and thus a "speaker" or "narrator".…”

Shifting animacy

“…Bernaerts et al 2014;Looser and Wheatly 2010) as well as linguistic clues (cf. Vogels et al 2013;Trompenaars et al 2016).…”

Editorial: Perspective taking in language

“…The perspectival center can also be a hypothetical or a fictional character (Stokke). Fictional narratives, for example, offer many examples of "unnatural" viewpoints of (anthropomorphized) animals and objects (Richardson, 2006;Trompenaars et al, 2018), and the status of the narrator as a "person" has been an issue of controversial debate (for an overview see Zeman, 2020). Also, viewpoints can be quite abstract, as seen in studies on perspectivization in grammar (Bergqvist; Spronck and Casartelli).…”