How can I come to terms with the animate/inanimate distinction in Japanese?


According to [this answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/15516/119),
"This made me laugh" would translate literally into Japanese as:

> これが僕{ぼく}を笑{わら}わせた。

However, the same answer explains that this would be an odd thing to say in
Japanese, because the Japanese language tends to avoid using an "inanimate
subject".

As far as I know, in English we don't have any preference for whether or not a
subject is animate or inanimate, though I could be wrong about that. I don't
know _how_ English works, I just think with it, and maybe I make unconscious
habitual choices.

In any case, I have no conceptual model for this inanimate/animate subject
distinction, and, as far as I can remember in all my years of studying
Japanese, this is the first time it's ever come up for me.

_How_ strange is a statement like `これが僕{ぼく}を笑{わら}わせた`? Are there examples
where the animate/inanimate distinction would lead to unparsable statements,
or is it just mildly awkward sounding?

"This made me laugh" in English is a perfectly acceptable statement, but are
there parallels in English to the Japanese distinction between animate and
inanimate subjects that would help me conceptualize what is happening in
Japanese?




My understanding is that it's a matter of intent. In English, you'd never say
"The car went to work" because cars can't _do_ things. People may make the car
do things, but the person was the intent behind the action.

Japanese expands this concept so that "this thing made me laugh" is weird
since _things_ largely have no intent. Perhaps "this thing is amusing" since
that holds no intent or perhaps "the fates amuse me (with this thing)".




Disclaimer: I'm nowhere near being good enough at Japanese to answer questions
on this site but since you asked, here we go:

I think the animate/inanimate distinction is only a particular case. The
general distinction is based on viewpoints. _From A Dictionary of Basic
Japanese Grammar_ (DBJG):

> "The speaker usually describes a situation or an event from his own
> viewpoint rather than from others' when he is involved in the situation or
> the event."
>
> "It's easier for the speaker to take the viewpoint of a person in the
> sentence subject position than to take the viewpoint of a person in other
> positions."

The way I see it, the speaker chooses the viewpoint for his sentence in this
order of preference (going from what's closest to him to what's the furthest
away): himself, someone from his group (family, school, colleagues...), the
hearer, a third person who isn't from his group, something.

This has multiple consequences :

**1: The 1st person subject can easily be left out (as it's the default
viewpoint).**

**2: Some verbs (あげる、くれる、もらう) _DEFINE_ the viewpoint of the sentence (of the
giver, receiver and receiver respectively):**

This makes a sentence like *私が田中さんに本をくれた ungrammatical because of a conflict
of viewpoint (choosing the viewpoint of the receiver (くれる) while the speaker
is the giver. In order to make the viewpoint coincide, あげる should be used).

This is also why くれる isn't used when the speaker and the hearer are neither
the giver nor the receiver. The speaker then tends to take the viewpoint of
the subject with either あげる or もらう.

This is also true of auxiliaries like いく and くる:

> 私はどろぼうにおそいかかっていった/*きた.

くる expresses the idea of going towards the speaker's viewpoint.

**3: The speaker tends to take the viewpoint of human beings rather than the
viewpoint of inanimate things (which are at the end of the list).**

**4: Some passive sentence feels unnatural (from DBJG):**

> (私の)息子は私に叱られた。  
>  The viewpoint should be the one of the speaker, but there the subject is
> his son.

**5 The speaker can't express others' feelings with adjectives like 悲しい which
express the sadness of the speaker.**

He has to use verbs like 悲しがる or 悲しむ "to look sad", or basically any
construction that tends to describe the scene from his viewpoint:

> 彼女は悲しそうだ She looks sad.  
>  彼女は悲しいということだ I heard that she is sad.

And so on.

