The Lexicon · Genealogy · Contemporary
KIMMERER, ROBIN WALL
b. 1953
The Grammar of Animacy (The Concept as Person)
Kimmerer: many Indigenous languages grammatically distinguish animate from inanimate in ways English has lost; the Concept of a being is itself a being. CoCA borrows the grammar at the institutional level. The Concept is named with the dignity normally reserved for persons. The Church is a who, not a what. The Lexicon entries are persons in conversation. The reader who notices the capitalization has noticed the grammar.