Animacy

The animacy hierarchy ( according to Silverstein 1976, the eng name animacy hierarchy is sometimes used in German-speaking. ) Is one of the hierarchies in language typology, with the help of which have individual linguistic grammatical phenomena systematically describe:

This hierarchy is, for example, in the grammatical phenomenon of ergativity split into play, but can in addition to the definiteness - depending on the language - also for differential object marking ( DOM) be relevant.

Depending on the language changes after a certain point in the hierarchy of a particular case - marking with another or with a zero mark. The further left a noun is to be classified, the " busy " is the referent of the noun and the higher its rank in the hierarchy.