How to understand - an animated or inanimate noun: rule, examples

The article will help to deal with the difficulties of dividing nouns into animated and inanimate in the grammatical principle.

Content

How to understand - an animated or inanimate noun?

Alas, the living is not always animated and vice versa: the fact that in understanding an ordinary person is inanimate, from the point of view of grammar can be very animated.

We understand.

*Category: an inanimate name noun (most often answers the question what?)*
Characteristic features	For example
He calls the subject.	Table, sled, cup, keyboard, etc.
He calls the substance: food products, materials, tissues, fossils, chemical elements, drugs, etc.	Sugar, milk, starch, gypsum, velvet, iron, diamond, hydrogen, citimon, etc.
He calls facts, phenomena, events.	Concert, training, flood, discussion, depression, rain, fog, hoarfrost, etc.
He calls the action.	Running, crush, laughter, crying, OR, etc.
He calls the condition.	Happiness, sadness, despair, etc.
He calls quality.	Sweetness, blue, ripeness, etc.
He calls the plant.	Oak, chamomile, thymothev, spruce, etc.
He calls the totality of objects or living beings.	Elnik, midges, lads, furniture, youth, game, relatives, herbs, etc.
They are not collective nouns, but are included in the category. (Answer the question of what?)	The people, the army, herd, army, Roy, etc.
He calls a living organism. (Answer the question who?)	Bacteria, virus, embryo, larva, microbe, embryo.
He calls an object that has only a plural.	Pants, scissors, wallpaper, perfume, etc.
He calls an inanimate object with a word with morphological signs of animation. (Answer the question of what?)	Divorite, talker (in the meaning of an egg without an embryo), swan (slang name for a hundred -ruble bill), “Moskvich” (auto), etc.

Important: in phrases with composite numbers, in the end of which there are two, three, four, animated nouns are inanimate, but at the same time they answer the question who?

For example: forty -two writers were present at the symposium (inappropriate).

You will find other important nuances regarding inanimate nouns in the next part of the article.

*Category: an animated noun (most often answers the question who?)*
Characteristic features	For example
He calls a living creature.	Man, fox, teacher, etc.
He calls something associated with a living being. (Answers the question who what?)	Doll, robot, dead man, nesting doll, drowned, dead, deceased. Attention: corpse - belongs to the category of inanimate.
He calls something associated with a living being (based on the context of a sentence).	Tyufyak, idol, stump, blank, idol, oak, idol, bag, tree, star, blue/white collar, etc. For example: this mattress was again deceived.
He calls the figures in playing cards, chess, billiards. (Answers the question what?)	King, Ferge, Valet, Ball, etc.
He calls fairy -tale characters.	The mermaid, the monster, the monster, etc.