All nouns are divided into animate and inanimate.

Animate nouns- these are the names of people and animals: man, son, teacher, student, cat, squirrel, lion, starling, crow, perch, pike, insect.

Inanimate nouns- these are the names of all other objects and phenomena: table, book, window, wall, institute, nature, forest, steppe, depth, kindness, incident, movement, trip.

Note. Division of nouns into animate ones. and inanimate does not fully reflect the division into living and nonliving that exists in the world. To animate nouns do not include, firstly, the names of trees and plants (pine, oak, linden, hawthorn, gooseberry, chamomile, bell), and secondly, the names of groups of living beings (people, army, battalion, crowd, herd, swarm). About words like virus, microbe, as well as corpse, dead man, doll, etc.

Animate nouns are morphologically and word-formatively different from inanimate nouns. Animate nouns - names of female persons or animals - are often motivated by a word that names a person or animal without indicating its gender or (less often) that names a male person or animal: teacher - teacher, student - student, schoolboy - schoolgirl, Muscovite - Muscovite, grandson - granddaughter.

Animate nouns, as a rule, have the morphological meaning husband. or female R. and only a few - the meaning of environments. r., while the belonging of a noun to one gender or another (except for the middle r.) is determined semantically: nouns husband. R. call a person or animal male, and nouns female. R. - female. Animate nouns. R. are called living beings without regard to gender. This or the name of a non-adult creature ( child), or common names type face, creature, animal, insect, mammal, herbivore.

Inanimate nouns are divided into three morphological genders - masculine, feminine and neuter.

Paradigms of animate and inanimate nouns in plural. hours are consistently different: animate nouns in the plural. h. have the form of wines. n., coinciding with the form of the genus. P.; gender: no brothers and sisters, no animals; Vin.p.: saw brothers and sisters, saw animals. Inanimate nouns in plural. h. have the form of wines. n., coinciding with the form named after. P.; them. P.: peaches, pears and apples lie on the table; wine P.: bought peaches, pears and apples.

The belonging of words to the category of animate or inanimate is peculiar and reveals itself morphologically in the system of names, which in their lexical meanings combine concepts of living and nonliving. These are the following cases.

1) Nouns that name objects that either do not correspond to the everyday idea of ​​living things (names of microorganisms: virus, microbes, bacteria) or, conversely, are associatively identified with living objects ( dead man, deceased, doll), are used as follows: the former tend to be used as inanimate ( observe, study bacteria, viruses, microbes and observe, study bacteria, viruses, microbes; the latter is preferable), the latter are used as animate ( our nets brought in a dead man. Pushk.).

2) Inanimate nouns applied to specific persons or living beings acquire morphological signs of animation. These are negatively characterizing names of the type bag, oak, stump, cap, mattress usually with a qualifying pronominal adjective: our bag was deceived, you can’t push anything into this oak (stump), I saw this old cap, this mattress.

3) Words idol And idol in meaning (the one who is worshiped, who is adored) (when attributed to a specific person) appear as animate: look with delight at your idol, adore your idol. The word idol means (that which is worshiped, imitated; ideal) appears sometimes as animate, sometimes as inanimate: Making an idol out of this old, useless person (L. Tolstoy); there is no need to make an idol out of spelling (gas); but: How Desdemona chooses an Idol for her heart (Pushk.). Noun idol in meaning (statue, sculpture, which is worshiped as a deity) is rarely used as an animate: On the banks of the Danube, the Russians placed a wooden idol of Perun (A.N. Tolstoy).

Words blockhead, idol, graven image, used abusively in relation to a person, have morphological signs of animation: I don’t want to see this idiot; And who gave birth to such an idol! (Sholokh.).

4) Words spirit(disembodied supernatural being), genius, type when applied to a face they act as animate: summon a spirit, know a genius, meet a strange type; I give him German geniuses as an example (Pushk); This is not the time to call out the shadows (Tutch.)(word shadow used in the meaning of “spirit, ghost”).

5) Words naming animate objects, when used to designate inanimate objects, can retain morphological signs of animation. This includes: a) words reconnaissance aircraft, fighter, bomber, janitor(device for mechanical wiping of sight glass): shoot down an enemy reconnaissance aircraft, bomber, install a janitor; b) names of some dances and songs: Cossack, Kamarinsky(sub.): At your wedding I will dance a Cossack(S.-C.); c) names of cars by brand, company: "Moskvich", "Tiger", "Zaporozhets"". All these words can have both forms of vin. p. equal to them. p., i.e. classify the named objects as inanimate, and forms of vin. p. equal to gender p., i.e. classify so-called objects are classified as animate.

6) Words used in some games, in particular cards and chess; queen, jack, king, knight, bishop declined as animate nouns: open jack, king; take an elephant, a knight. Following the pattern of declension of such names as jack and king, they change ace And trump: discard an ace; open trump card.

Andrey NARUSHEVICH,
Taganrog

A few questions about the animate/inanimate category

Little is said about the category of animate/inanimate nouns in school textbooks of the Russian language, and yet it represents one of the most interesting linguistic phenomena. Let's try to answer some questions that arise when considering this category.

What is an “animate” and an “inanimate” object?

It is known that the classification of nouns as animate or inanimate is associated with the division by man of the surrounding world into living and inanimate. However, even V.V. Vinogradov noted the “mythological nature” of the terms “animate/inanimate”, since textbook well-known examples ( plant, dead person, doll, people and etc . ) demonstrate the discrepancy between the objective status of an object and its comprehension in language. There is an opinion that by animate in grammar we mean “active” objects identified with a person, to which are contrasted “inactive” and, therefore, inanimate objects 1. At the same time, the “activity/inactivity” sign does not fully explain why the words dead man, deceased are considered animate, and people, crowd, flock– to inanimate nouns. Apparently, the category of animate/inanimate reflects everyday ideas about living and inanimate things, i.e. a person’s subjective assessment of the objects of reality, which does not always coincide with the scientific picture of the world.

Of course, the “standard” of a living being for a person has always been the person himself. Any language stores “petrified” metaphors, showing that people since ancient times saw the world as anthropomorphic, described it in their own image and likeness: the sun is out, the river is running, the leg of a chair, the spout of a teapot and so on . Let us recall at least the anthropomorphic gods or characters of lower mythology. At the same time, life forms other than humans: some invertebrates, microorganisms, etc. are often ambiguously assessed by ordinary native speakers. For example, as a survey of informants showed, to nouns sea ​​anemone, amoeba, ciliate, polyp, microbe, virus the question is regularly asked What? Obviously, in addition to signs of visible activity (movement, development, reproduction, etc.), the everyday concept of a living being (an “animate” object) also includes a sign of similarity to a person.

How is the animate/inanimate nature of a noun determined?

Traditionally, the coincidence of the forms of the accusative and genitive cases in the singular and plural in masculine nouns (I see a man, a deer, friends, bears) and only in the plural for feminine and neuter nouns (I see women, animals). Accordingly, grammatical inanimateness is manifested in the coincidence of accusative and nominative cases (I see a house, tables, streets, fields).

It should be noted that the grammatical opposition of nouns by animate/inanimate is expressed not only in the form of a specific case: the difference in the forms of nouns in the accusative case leads to a difference and opposition of paradigms in general. For nouns male on the basis of animateness/inanimateness, singular and plural paradigms are distinguished, and for feminine and neuter nouns there are only plural paradigms, that is, each of the animate/inanimate categories has its own declension paradigm.

There is an opinion that the main means of expressing the animate/inanimate nature of a noun is the accusative case form of the agreed definition: “It is by the form of the agreed definition in the accusative case that the animate or inanimate nature of the noun in the linguistic sense of the word is determined” 2 . Obviously, this position requires clarification: the form of an adjective word should be considered as the main means of expressing animateness/inanimateness only in relation to the use of unchangeable words: I see beautiful cockatoo(V. = R.); I see beautiful coat(V. = I.). In other cases, the form of the adjectival word duplicates the meanings of case, number, gender and animate/inanimate nature of the main word - the noun.

The coincidence of case forms (V. = I. or V. = R.) in the declension of allied words of the adjectival structure (in subordinate clause): These were books, which I knew(V. = I.); These were writers, which I knew(V. = R.).

Feminine and neuter nouns that appear only in the form do not have a grammatical indicator of animate/inanimate singular(singularia tantum), since these words have an independent form of the accusative case, which does not coincide with either the nominative or the genitive: catch swordfish, study cybernetics etc. Thus, the animate/inanimate nature of these nouns is not determined grammatically.

What is the fluctuating grammatical indicator of animate/inanimate?

Let's look at a few examples: And from now on the embryo is called fruit(I. Akimushkin) – I saw in a flask embryo Swirled like a horn(Yu. Arabov); Science microbiology studies various bacteria and viruses(N. Goldin) – Bacteria can be identified by morphological properties(A. Bykov); Getting married, woman carries away with myself your dolls (I. Solomonik) – Before going to bed, you played in my office again. Feeding the dolls (L. Panteleev). As we see, the same words behave either as animate or as inanimate.

Variable forms of the accusative case of nouns germ, embryo, microbe, bacterium and so on. are explained by the ambiguity in the assessment of the corresponding objects by speakers. Typically, these forms of life are inaccessible to observation, which causes hesitation among native speakers in classifying these objects as living or nonliving.

Dolls are involved in playful (as well as magical) human activities. In children's games, dolls function as living beings. The dolls are bathed, combed, put to bed, that is, actions are performed on them that in other conditions are aimed only at living beings. Play activity creates conditions for understanding dolls as objects that are functionally similar to living things (functionally animate). At the same time, dolls remain inanimate objects. The combination of signs of living and inanimate causes fluctuations in the grammatical indicator of animate/inanimate. Some names of game pieces exhibit similar features: queen, ace, pawn and etc.: I took from the table, as I remember now, ace of hearts and threw it up(M. Lermontov) – Having placed the cards, take all the aces, lying on top of the packs(Z. Ivanova).

Some animals have long been considered by people primarily as food (cf. modern word seafood). For example, lobsters, oysters, lobsters, as noted by V.A. Itskovich, “are not found alive in Central Russia and became known first as exotic dishes and only later as living creatures” 2. Apparently, nouns oyster, squid, lobster and others initially declined only according to the inanimate type, the appearance of the accusative case form, coinciding with the genitive form, is associated with the development of the meaning ‘living being’, later in relation to the meaning of ‘food’: Boil squid, cut into noodles(N. Golosova) – Squid is boiled in salt water(N. Akimova); Nearby fishermen brought to the city fish: in the spring - small anchovy, in the summer - ugly flounder, in the fall - mackerel, fat mullet and oysters (A. Kuprin) – Are you really eat oysters? (A. Chekhov) It is interesting that in the meaning of ‘food’, not only the names of exotic animals acquire grammatical inanimateness: Fat herring Fine soak, cut into fillets(M. Peterson); Processed pike perch being cut into pieces(V. Turygin).

Thus, fluctuations in the grammatical indicator of animate/inanimate are caused by the peculiarities of semantics, as well as the ambiguity in assessing an object as living or inanimate.

Why nouns dead man And Deceased animated?

Man's understanding of living nature is inextricably linked with the concept of death. ‘Deceased’ is always ‘one who was alive’, who previously had life. In addition, it is no coincidence that folklore is replete with stories about the living dead. You can still find echoes of the ideas of our distant ancestors that the dead are characterized by some special form of life, as if dead man able to hear, think, remember.

Nouns dead, deceased, departed and others denote deceased people, i.e. possess the attribute 'man' - the most important for the meaning of animation. Here's the word dead body means ‘the body of a deceased organism’, i.e. only a material shell (cf. expressions corpses of the dead, corpses of the dead). Apparently, this semantic difference explains the grammatical animation of the names of the dead and the inanimateness of the word corpse: How strong are all the stones in their callings, - When dead having covered guard (K. Sluchevsky); A convene I am those for whom I work, dead people Orthodox... - Cross yourself! Summon the dead for housewarming(A. Pushkin); Nastya only once, long before the war, had to see a drowned man (V. Rasputin); Teamsters throwing corpses on a sleigh with a wooden knock(A. Solzhenitsyn).

Why words people, crowd, flock inanimate?

The listed words denote a certain set of living objects - people or animals. This set is conceptualized as a single whole - a collection of living beings, and this collection is not equal to the simple sum of its components. For example, the attribute “set,” which expresses the idea of ​​quantity in the concept of “people,” is combined in the concept of “people” with the idea of ​​quality—“the totality of people in their specific interactions.” Thus, common feature words of this group – ‘totality’ – turns out to be leading and forms the meaning of inanimateness. V.G. Gak connects the nouns in question with the category of collective (quasi-animate) object: “Between animate and inanimate objects there is an intermediate group of collective objects consisting of animate units. Words denoting such objects... can be conditionally called quasi-animate” 4. The grammatical generalization of semantics is expressed in the morphological indicator of inanimateness (V. = I.): I see crowds, peoples, flocks, herds and so on.

Why are plant nouns inanimate?

In the language picture plant world, which are a qualitatively different form of life than animals and humans, are not perceived as living organisms. The ability to move independently has long been recognized as one of the characteristic features alive. As Aristotle pointed out, “the beginning of movement arises within us from ourselves, even if nothing from outside has set us in motion. We do not see anything like this in inanimate [bodies], but they are always set in motion by something external, and a living being, as we say, moves itself” 5 . The inability of plant organisms to move independently, the absence of visible motor activity and a number of other signs lead to the fact that in the human mind plants, together with objects of inorganic nature, constitute a motionless, static part of the surrounding world. This is indicated by V.A. Itskovich: “...by living we mean an object capable of independent movement, so plants are classified as inanimate objects” 6. Thus, the predominance of inanimate signs in everyday concepts of plants, as well as the nature of human labor activity, who have long been widely using plants for a variety of purposes, have determined that plants are in most cases perceived as inanimate objects.

How does the meaning of animate/inanimate manifest itself?

The sign 'living' ('non-living') can appear not only in the meanings of nouns, but also in the meanings of characteristic words. Indeed, the analysis showed that in language not only nouns, but also verbs and adjectives have the meaning of animate/inanimate. This is manifested in the fact that verbs and adjectives can denote attributes of objects that characterize these objects as living or nonliving. For example, the meaning of the verb read indicates that the action is performed by a person (person) and is directed at an inanimate object: read a book, newspaper, advertisement and so on.

The existence of such semantic connections made it possible to construct a classification of verbs in the Russian language according to the presence in their meanings of an indication of the animate/inanimate nature of the subject and object of the action. This classification was developed by prof. L.D. Chesnokova 7. Thus, all verbs of the Russian language can be distributed according to to the following groups:

1) animately marked – denote actions performed by living beings: breathe, dream, sleep and etc;
2) inanimately marked – denote actions performed by inanimate objects: burn, crumble, evaporate and etc . ;
3) neutral – denote actions common to living and inanimate objects: stand, lie, fall and etc .

A similar division is observed among adjectives:

1) animately marked adjectives denote characteristics of living beings: external signs, characteristics of temperament, volitional qualities, emotional, intellectual and physical properties and etc.: lean, long-legged, lop-eared, phlegmatic, hot-tempered, kind, evil, smart, persistent, blind, talented etc.;
2) inanimately marked adjectives denote signs of inanimate objects (phenomena) - spatial and temporal qualities and relationships, perceptible properties and qualities of things, signs in relation to the material of manufacture, etc.: liquid, rare, deep, spicy, sour, bitter, strong, thick, iron, glass, wood, swampy etc.;
3) neutral adjectives denote characteristics that can be attributed to both living beings and inanimate objects - the most general spatial characteristics, color characteristics, evaluative characteristics, belonging, etc.: left, right, high, small, heavy, white, red, good, mother's.

Thus, the animate/inanimate meaning of a noun is usually supported by animate- or inanimate-marked elements of the context. Otherwise, they are updated figurative meanings, which provides semantic agreement between words.

Thus, for animate nouns in combination with inanimate marked verbs, the most typical metonymic transfer is ‘work – author’: Then the worker began read Brockhaus (M. Bulgakov); But anyway Doderlein necessary view... Here he is – Doderlein. "Operative obstetrics"(M. Bulgakov).

For inanimate nouns, it is possible to transfer names from inanimate objects to living ones: Hungry Bursa was on the prowl through the streets of Kyiv and forced everyone to be careful(N. Gogol); Me saw off all warm and loving camera in full force, without party differences(E. Ginzburg); Prison doesn't like brave men(V. Shalamov). There are also many cases of occasional metonymic transfer, affecting the semantics of animate/inanimate substantive: - Fast! To the phone!.. A tube vibrated, trembled, choked with anxiety, didn't dare speak out fatal question. Only kept repeating with a questioning intonation: “Is that you? It's you?"(E. Ginzburg); Once in the hospital I heard: “From the seventh ward nasal boil is prescribed» (V. Levi).

Semantic mismatch in the animate/inanimate aspect can be overcome through metaphorical transfer of the meaning of the noun. An example is the combination of inanimate nouns with animate marked words, creating the artistic device of personification (personification): Sitting on the forehead of a short man, Pimple with envy looked on the foreheads tall people And thought: “I wish I was in such a position!”(F. Krivin).

So, let's summarize. Animate and inanimate nouns denote not so much living and inanimate objects as objects conceptualized as living and nonliving. In addition, between the members of the opposition ‘thought of as living / thought of as inanimate’, there are a number of intermediate formations that combine the signs of living and inanimate, the presence of which is determined by associative mechanisms of thinking and other features of human mental activity, for example:

1) conceivable as being alive ( dead, deceased, departed and etc.);
2) mentally imagined alive ( mermaid, goblin, cyborg and etc.);
3) conceived as a semblance of a living thing ( doll, baby doll, jack, queen and etc.);
4) conceived as a totality of living things ( people, crowd, flock, herd and etc.).

Thus, the category of animate/inanimate nouns, like some other linguistic phenomena, reflects the anthropocentric attitude of human thinking, and the discrepancy between the linguistic picture of the world and scientific understanding is another manifestation of the subjective factor in language.

1 Stepanov Yu.S.. Fundamentals of general linguistics. M., 1975. P. 130.

2 Miloslavsky I.G.. Morphological categories of modern Russian language. M.: Nauka, 1981. P. 54.

3 Itskovich V.A.. Animated and inanimate nouns in the modern Russian language (norm and tendency) // Questions of linguistics. 1980, No. 4. P. 85.

4 Gak V.G. Verbal combinability and its reflection in dictionaries of verb control // Lexicology and lexicography / Under. ed. V.V. Morkovkina. M.: Russian. lang., 1972. P. 68.

5 Aristotle. Physics // Works in 4 volumes. M., 1981. T. 3. P. 226.

6 Itskovich V.A.. Animated and inanimate nouns in the modern Russian language (norm and tendency) // Questions of linguistics. 1980, No. 4. P. 96.

7 Chesnokova L.D.. Pronouns Who, What and the semantics of animation - inanimateness in the modern Russian language // Russian linguistics. Kyiv: Higher. school, 1987. Issue. 14. pp. 69–75.

Lesson type: explanation of new material.

Goals:

• Educational: to familiarize students with the concept of animateness and inanimateness; consolidate the ability to distinguish between animate and inanimate nouns.
• Developmental: give the concept of personification as a technique used in fiction.
• Worldview: students will be convinced that knowledge of the method of determining the animation and inanimateness of nouns will help them in drawing up a “morphological portrait” (morphological analysis) of a noun.

Pedagogical objective of the lesson: create conditions for joint educational modeling activities; to develop students’ communication skills and skills of conducting educational dialogue on a meaningful basis.

Epigraph for the lesson:“Language is a treasury from which we take pearl words that are spoken more than once. Sometimes they give “cracks and dents.”

DURING THE CLASSES

1. Organizational moment

Five-minute warm-up.

A game: Who can remember more in two minutes the names of fairy-tale characters so that their names contain hissing w, h, sh, sh with vowels and, u, eh? (Cipollino, Miracle Yudo, Jumping Bunny, Shapoklyak, Princess and the Pea, Pike...)
– Who can remember more names of animals and birds that contain a combination of hissing words zh, sh, h, shch with the letters i, a, y? (Giraffe, toad, seagull, siskin, hedgehog, crane, bear cubs, lapwing, etc.)

2. Self-test homework by the key “Check yourself”

Helpers report homework results to the teacher during recess.

Competition “Who Lives in the Forest?”

– What animal is called this:

Oblique spiny clubfoot
Longhorned gray.

- Who's doing what? Write five sentences with homogeneous members.

3. Entering the learning situation (“inclusion in the lesson”)

"Intrigue"

- Guys, today we have an unusual lesson. Every student seems to dream that the lesson begins with a game. Our game is linguistic.
- What does it mean? (Language)
– What knowledge is required in this game? (Spelling, phonetic, lexical, syntactic)

"Lexical warm-up"

– Let’s read the epigraph to the lesson: “Language is a treasury from which we take pearl words that are spoken more than once. Sometimes they give “cracks and dents.”
– How did you understand this statement? (Language is our wealth. We must treat our language, words, as a treasury with care. We must avoid mistakes in our speech).

4. Spelling workshop

– Let’s write down a short vocabulary dictation for work “Until the first mistake.” (Words chosen to introduce a new topic)

Sunset, dawn, sprout, shoots, rustle, pike, giraffe, miracle, numbers, art, craftswomen, age, bee, quote, acorn, building.

"Entering a learning situation"

– Let’s read words that contain recently learned spellings. (Students name all the words except the word “art.”)
– Let’s designate spelling patterns or “error-dangerous” places graphically.
Nikolai Maksimovich Shansky, a linguist, advises using a “linguistic microscope” to see all spelling patterns.

Vocabulary work

– What is a microscope? Let's look into the explanatory dictionary. Microscope is a device for viewing objects that are indistinguishable to the naked eye).
– Let’s name all the spellings found in the vocabulary dictation:

1. Roots with alternation.
2. I-Y after C.
3. O-Y after hissing ones.
4. Spelling of prefixes.

– What do these words have in common? What part of speech do they represent? (They are all nouns).
– Who can prove it? (They all answer the questions: Who? What?)
– The main goal of our lesson: to find out why we ask the question who? What about others?

5. Topic movement

– Let’s write down the title of our lesson, which contains the main idea of ​​our work, and explain the punctuation marks in this sentence.
Animated means alive... (We will put a dash in the sentence, since a dash is always placed before the words “this”, “here”, “means”).
– Why did they put an ellipsis at the end of the sentence?

“Page of History” (From the history of punctuation marks, the student gives a little information about ellipses).

Student message.

M.V. Lomonosov, the creator of the first Russian grammar, called this sign “ellipsis”. An ellipsis placed at the end of a sentence suggests that the thought is unsaid, unsaid.

– So, in the process of work we must finalize, that is, continue the thought in the form of reflection, reasoning.

Animated means alive... We are surrounded by different objects in the world. Among them there are those who live, breathe, move. This means they are alive or animate.

- Let's return to our vocabulary dictation and find all the animate nouns. Let's highlight them with one line. Think out loud! Giraffe, pike, craftswomen, bee - these are animate nouns, because they answer the question Who?. They move, they breathe, they live.

Vocabulary work.

– Who are the craftswomen? Let's look into the explanatory dictionary. Craftswomen– these are people who have achieved high art in their field.
- Let’s make a sentence so that it contains a comparison or phraseological turn with the word

Lacemakers work like bees.

– Let us explain the meaning of this phraseological unit. (Very hard).

"Linguistic experiment"

- Let's think and think out loud! Let's look at our words and find out: do linguists and biologists have the same opinion about living things? Let's prove it. (From the point of view of biologists, sprouts and shoots are living organisms, because they live, breathe, grow. Our historical ancestors also considered a tree, a tulip, a stone to be alive).

Conclusion: Linguists now consider as animate only those who... (continue my thought further) know how to move: people, insects, animals.

– What does living, animate mean? Let's highlight the root in the word animate - -shower- (One who lives, breathes, has spirit, breath, the ability to move).
- Let's name inanimate nouns. What do they mean? (They depict the “inanimate world”: the plant world, the objective world).

6. Consolidation

– Now let’s try to divide the words into two columns.

Young man, fungus, monster, child, face (meaning “part of the body”), violet, slob, moss, feather grass, swallow, swift, hare, goat, bear, bee.

Who? What?

Youth Mushroom
Monster Face
Child Violet
Sloppy Moss
Swallow Feather grass

– What are the names of the words in the first and second columns?

Remember: All nouns are divided into inanimate and animate. Animate nouns denote persons and animals and answer the question WHO?
Inanimate nouns denote objects, plants, and inanimate phenomena. They answer the question WHAT?
– Do you think names are animate or inanimate?
– Name the heroes of literary works (stories, novels, etc.) you have read.
– Do you think THESE proper names are animate and inanimate nouns?
– To what category of nouns (animate or inanimate) do the names of Russian heroes belong? fairy tales(Baba Yaga, Koschey the Immortal, Serpent Gorynych)?

7. Physical education minute

They stood up together - one, two, three -
We are now heroes.
We'll put our palms to our eyes,
Let's spread our strong legs,
Turning to the right
Let's look around majestically.
And you need to go left too
Look from under your palms,
And to the right. And further
Over the left shoulder.
Bowed left, right
It turns out great!

– Do you think it is easy to distinguish between animate and inanimate nouns? Not always, you can make a mistake. Let's look at this with specific examples.

1. There are no foxes in our zoo. (R.P.)
2. I saw funny little foxes. (V.P.)
3. I picked a basket of chanterelles. (R.P.)
4. Collected red chanterelles. (V.P.)

Conclusion:

Matching plural endings in Gen. and Vin. case is a sign of animation, and discrepancy is a sign of inanimateness.
– How will we recognize animate and inanimate nouns?

"Knot for memory"

Remember: You need to know the gender of nouns in order to:

1. Correctly ask them the question (WHO or WHAT?).
2. Correctly form the Accusative case form of masculine and neuter nouns in the singular and all genders in the plural.

Exercise: Put these nouns into the form Vin. singular and plural: zoo, forest, deer, flock, dream, sparrow.

8. Working with the textbook

Let’s read the additional material in the textbook “Take Note”, page 263 (textbook edited by M.M. Razumovskaya.)

– What new things did you learn from the textbook material? (Masculine and masculine nouns are mainly animated. female gender. There are very few animate neuter nouns: child, animal, mammal, insect, monster, creature, monster. Nouns denoting plurality and answering the question what? are inanimate.)

– Let’s verbally make sentences with the following nouns... (My family consists of three people.) See exercise 673
– The division of nouns into animate and inanimate does not always coincide with the scientific idea of ​​living nature.
– What category of nouns are:

1. Names of figures in checkers, chess ( queen, pawn, knight, queen)?
2. ...names of religious objects (God , angel, saint, brownie, water, goblin)?
3. ...names of microorganisms in professional speech ( ciliate-slipper, microbe)?
4. ...designations (characteristics) of people through the names of objects ( rag, mattress, stump and etc.)
5. ...designations of the dead ( deceased, corpse, corpse).

– In all cases we are talking about animate objects, except for the word corpse!
- We work with text.

Nature is a magician. She not only gives us joy, but also creates amazing things. You just have to bend down and look for them.

Assignment to the text.

1. Let's explain punctuation marks.
2. Let’s name “error-dangerous” places in words.

– What artistic technique does the author use? ? (Personification. The author compares nature with a living wizard.)
- Which helpful advice can be extracted from this text? (The author reminds us that we need to take care of all living things that surround us. We must be attentive and observant to the world around us.)

“Take note!”

In fiction and folklore, the PERSONIFICATION DEVICE is widely used - depicting inanimate beings as living ones. Remember that in fairy tales not only the goldfish and the clattering fly can speak, but also the mirror. Examples: “And the forest stands there, smiling,” “The sky was already breathing in autumn,” “the sensitive reeds are dozing.”

– Orally perform the exercise. 675.

Let's solve a grammar problem.

"Find the odd one out."

1. Cabbage, newspaper, driver.
2. Plant, proposal, doll.
3. Ace, jack, kids.
4. Waterman, water, driver.

Slide show. Frames depicting objects of the living and inanimate world are shown. ( Annex 1 )

9. Let's summarize the lesson

– Let’s summarize our linguistic research (i.e. scientific study) of the topic. Let's draw a scientific conclusion based on the reference words.

The world around us is rich and diverse. We are surrounded by living and inanimate objects. Animated are those that have the ability to move. They answer the question who?
Plants and natural phenomena are the inanimate world. These are inanimate nouns, they answer the question what?

What we learned:

1. We learned that animate nouns answer the question WHO? And inanimate ones - to the question WHAT?
2. Coincidence of plural endings in Gen. and Vin. cases is a sign of animation, and discrepancy is a sign of inanimateness.
3. The words doll, dead man, dead man, ace, jack, trump card refer to animate nouns.
4. K inanimate names nouns include the words: people, crowd, platoon, flock, group, youth, peasantry, children, etc. All of them denote plurality.

10. Homework. Add text.

Why do you need to know this?
– The absent-minded person from Basseynaya Street does not understand why it is so important to know whether this noun is animate or not, and does not want to learn the rules.
Please explain to HIM why this is necessary.

11. Grading

Bibliography:

1. Sergey Yesenin. Poems. Moscow. Publishing house " Soviet Russia", 1985
2. M.S. Lapatukhin, E.V.Skorlupovskaya, G.P.Snetova. School Dictionary Russian language. M.: Education, 1998, p.179.
3. OK. Skorokhod. Vocabulary work in Russian language lessons. M.: Education, 1990.
4. Russian language. 5th grade. Textbook for general education institutions. Edited by Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences M. M. Razumovskaya, Doctor of Philological Sciences P. A. Lekant. M.: Bustard, 1998, pp. 263-266.

Instructions

In Russian grammar, the category of animation does not always coincide with scientific ideas about living things. There are many nouns that are considered inanimate in the language, but refer to phenomena inherent in living nature, and sometimes vice versa.

Animate nouns give names to living creatures that tend to move: for example, walk, run, jump. When used in speech, we rarely encounter neuter nouns that are classified as animate (these include the words “bogeyman,” “monster,” “animal,” “insect,” “child”). Animate nouns are usually nouns that are either feminine or masculine.

IN difficult cases to distinguish whether nouns are animate or inanimate, the grammatical forms expressed in them help.

Animacy or inanimateness is recognized by a certain coincidence of the forms of the accusative case of the noun. In the plural, the forms of words coinciding with the genitive case speak of animation (“draw bears, butterflies”), and with the nominative - inanimateness (“watch cartoons, albums”). Similar coincidences can be observed in adjectives agreed with masculine nouns (“dear guest” – animate; “lay a carpet” – inanimate).

Animation will be indicated to you by constructions of nouns with a preposition with separate verbs denoting an action - a transition to another position: the endings of the nominative and accusative cases in the plural they will be the same (“enroll as a student”, “become an artist”).

Please note that the categories of animate or inanimate tend to sometimes fluctuate. According to established modern norms of the Russian language, nouns naming microorganisms and some other names are defined as inanimate (“to describe bacteria”, but not “bacteria”; “to consider larvae”, but not “larvae”). An obsolete form of such nouns, speaking of animation, can be found in scientific literature. Eigenvalue names of fish allows us to consider them animate, but these words, which have become the names of dishes, very often in use acquire the coinciding forms of the nominative and accusative cases, which is an indicator of inanimateness (for example, “to catch crayfish” (animate) - “to cook smoked crayfish” (inanimate .)). “Neptune”, “Mars”, “Pluto” are nouns that can be animate (names of Gods) and inanimate (names of planets).

The words “humanity” and “students”, which mean a collection of animate objects, are inanimate in grammar. And when you decline such words as “dead”, “dead”, “queen” (a piece in chess), “jack” (the name of one of the cards) you can find grammatical category animation. One can speak about the attitude towards animation by considering the names of some fantastic creatures, which include “

Nouns have a constant morphological sign of animation.

The sign of animacy of nouns is closely related to the concept of living / inanimate. Nevertheless, animacy is not a category of meaning, but a morphological feature itself.

All morphological features are characterized by the fact that they have a typified formal expression - they are expressed by formative morphemes (endings or formative suffixes - see morphemics). Morphological features of words can be expressed

1) intra-word - formative morphemes of the word itself ( table-Ø - tables),

2) extra-wordly - form-building morphemes of agreed words ( new coat - new coat),

Both of these means of expression can be presented together. In this case, one grammatical meaning is expressed several times in a sentence - both intra-word and extra-word ( new table-Ø - new tables).

Animacy as a morphological feature also has formal means of expression. Firstly, animateness/inanimateness is expressed by the endings of the noun itself:

1) animate nouns have the same plural endings. numbers V. p. and R. p., and for nouns husband. This also applies to units. number;

2) inanimate nouns have the same plural endings. numbers V. p. and I. p., and for nouns husband. This also applies to units. number.

Nouns are represented in the Russian language with fluctuations in animation: their V. p. can coincide with both I. p. and R. p., for example, (I see) microbes / microbes, describe characters / characters, creatures / creatures-Ø;

In feminine and neuter nouns that have only singular forms, animation is not formally expressed ( youth, students), they are not formally characterized by their animation.

Animacy has non-verbal expression: the ending of an adjective or participle that agrees with a noun in a v. p. differs depending on the animate or inanimate nature of the noun, cf.: (I see) new students, But new tables.

The extra-verbal expression of the animacy of nouns is more universal than the intra-verbal one: it expresses animacy even in the case of the immutability of the noun: (I see) beautiful madam, But beautiful coats.

The animacy of most nouns reflects a certain state of affairs in extra-linguistic reality: animate nouns are mainly called living beings, and inanimate are inanimate objects, but there are cases of violation of this pattern:

Animation, as already said, constant sign noun. It must be borne in mind that different meanings one word can be differently shaped according to animation, for example: I see genius(person) - I appreciate it genius-Ø (mind).

Gender as a morphological feature of a noun

Nouns have a constant morphological gender marker and are classified as masculine, feminine or neuter.

The main expression of morphological gender is extra-verbal - the endings of adjectives, participles in the attributive position and words with an inconstant gender marker in the predicate position, which agree with the noun, are the endings of the verb in the past tense or conditional mood, as well as short adjective or participles.

Masculine, feminine and neuter gender include words with the following compatibility:

Male

new student has arrived-Ø

Female

new student has arrived

Average

the big window is open

Some nouns ending - A, denoting signs, properties of persons, in I. p. have a double characterization by gender depending on the gender of the designated person:

is yours-Ø the ignoramus has come-Ø,

your ignoramus came.

Such nouns are classified as general family

There are nouns in the Russian language that denote the name of a person by profession, which, when denoting a male person, act as words of the masculine gender, that is, they attach agreed words with masculine endings; when they denote a female person, the definition is used in masculine, and the predicate is used in feminine(mainly in colloquial speech):

the new doctor has arrived-Ø (male),

a new doctor has arrived(woman).

These words are “candidates” for the general gender; their gender is sometimes called transitional to the general, but in dictionaries they are characterized as words of the masculine gender.

There are about 150 words in the Russian language that vary in gender, for example: coffee- masculine/neuter gender, shampoo- masculine/feminine.

Nouns are plural only ( cream, scissors) do not belong to any of the genders, since in the plural the formal differences between nouns of different genders are not expressed (cf.: desks - tables).

Thus, the main expression of gender is non-verbal. Intra-word gender is consistently expressed only in nouns - substantivized adjectives and participles: sentry, ice cream, dining room: in singular forms these words have endings that clearly indicate their gender. For nouns of the 2nd declension masculine and 3rd declension feminine, the entire system of their endings is specific; as for the endings of individual case forms, they may not be indicative, cf. table-Ø - night-Ø.

For all inanimate nouns(and there are about 80% of such nouns in the language), the gender is conditional and is in no way connected with extra-linguistic reality.

Among animate nouns - names of persons or animals, gender is often associated with the gender of the designated creature, cf.: mom - dad, son - daughter, cow - bull. However, it is necessary to understand the difference between grammatical gender and ungrammatical gender. Thus, in the Russian language there are animate neuter nouns ( child, animal), in nouns - names of animals, male and female individuals are often called the same ( dragonfly, crocodile), among words - names of persons there is also not always a correspondence between gender and gender. Yes, word individual feminine, although it can mean both a woman and a man (see, for example, A.S. Pushkin: Someone wrote to him from Moscow that a famous person would soon enter into legal marriage with a young and beautiful girl).

Determining the gender of compound words (abbreviations) and indeclinable nouns presents a certain difficulty. The following rules apply to them.

Generic characteristics abbreviations depends on what type the given compound word belongs to.

A type of abbreviation formed by adding the initial parts ( caretaker), the initial part of the first word with the second unabridged ( Sberbank) and the beginning of the first word with the beginning and/or end of the second ( trade mission → trade mission), is determined by the gender of the main word in the original phrase: good organizational work, Russian trade mission, new Sberbank.

A type of abbreviation consisting of initial sounds ( GUM) or letters ( Moscow State University), as well as abbreviations mixed type, in which the initial part of the first word is connected to the first letters or sounds of other words ( Glavk), is defined ambiguously. Initially, they also acquire the gender of the main word in the original phrase, for example, Bratsk hydroelectric power station. However, during the process of use, the original generic characteristic is consistently retained only by abbreviations from the first letters of the original phrase. Abbreviations consisting of the first sounds behave differently. Some of them acquire generic characteristics in accordance with appearance words. Yes, words BAM, university, MFA, NEP, registry office and some others became masculine words and acquired the ability to decline in the second declension, like nouns like house. Other abbreviations ending in a consonant with a neuter and feminine stem word may have hesitation: they may have a gender characteristic in accordance with the gender of the main word and not be inflected ( in our housing office) or, when inclined, used as masculine words ( in our housing office). Abbreviations ending in a vowel are not inflected and are predominantly neuter ( our RONO - district department of public education).

Indeclinable nouns, getting into the Russian language or being formed in it, must acquire a generic characteristic, which will manifest itself only when choosing adjectives, participles and verbs that agree with the noun.

There are the following patterns in the choice of gender characteristics by such nouns: gender depends either on the meaning of the word or on the gender of another Russian word, which is considered as a synonym or as a generic name for a given unchangeable word. For different groups leading nouns are different criteria.

If a noun denotes an object, then it usually acquires a neuter characteristic: coat, muffler, metro. However, feminine Avenue(because Street), kohlrabi(since it's cabbage), coffee- with hesitation - masculine / neuter, masculine - penalty, euro.

If a noun denotes an animal, it is usually masculine: chimpanzee, cockatoo. Exceptions: Iwasi, Tsetse- feminine gender (since herring, fly).

If a noun denotes a person, then its gender depends on the gender of this person: words Monsieur, couturier masculine, as they denote men; words madam, mademoiselle feminine, since they denote women, and the words counterpart, incognito of a general gender, since they can designate both men and women.

If a noun means geographical feature, then its gender is determined by the gender of the Russian word, which denotes the type of object: Tbilisi masculine, since it is city(masculine), Mississippi feminine, as it is river, Lesotho neuter, since it is state. Everything that has been said applies only to inflexible words, therefore Moscow- a noun is not masculine, but feminine, although it is a city, since it is inflected.