Indicating referent animacy via adjectives/stative verbs?

[Trebor]

(The thread title has been changed by request of GreenBowTie.)

Are there any natlangs that systematically distinguish, morphologically or lexically, adjectives or stative verbs which refer to humans vs. objects/events/ideas?

For example:

(1) a. Alex is an admirable person because of all the volunteering he does.
b. He has the admirable goal of becoming a humanitarian aid worker.

(2) a. Joe is a really funny (amusing) guy because he's studied comedy.
b. The author wrote a funny (amusing) book last year.

(3) a. John is such an interesting man because of all the traveling he's done.
b. Have you read that interesting linguistics paper?

(4) a. A strange (unusual) lady walked into the store.
b. A strange (unusual) coincidence occurred yesterday.

[hwhatting]

I'd imagine that there are some languages out there that distinguish personal / animate / inanimate genders and that have agreement for these genders on adjectives. Would that be what you have in mind?
Polish does this in a limited way; the male nominative plural has different forms depending on whether the noun is animate or inanimate:
dobrzy leśnicy "good foresters"
dobre stosunki "good relations"
This also holds for the predicative position:
leśnicy są dobrzy " the foresters are good"
stosunki są dobre "the relations are good"

Like other Slavic languages, Polish has different ways for forming the accusative of male nouns.
For persons and other nouns high on the animacy scale, the accusative is like the genitive: sg. dobrego leśnika, pl. dobrych leśników
For the rest, the accusative is like the nominative: sg. dobry stosunek, pl. dobre stosunki

Otherwise, leśnik and stosunek are both male and the adjectives agreeing with them show the same forms. In Polish, the animacy distinction is an add-on to the gender system.

[GreenBowTie]

don't name threads like this

[zompist]

Morphologically, yes, that's gender.

Lexically and non-systematically, yes. It's common to have separate terms for human and animal body parts or basic actions: breast/udder, hair/fur, mouth/gueule, pierna/pata, essen/fressen. Words may have quirky restrictions— e.g. "pretty" can't be applied to just anything.

But to make a systematic lexical distinction would be to have a syncretic replacement for every adjective, and I don't think any natlang does that.

[Trebor]

GreenBowTie--I shall keep your request in mind. It could make boardwide searches more difficult.

Thanks for your feedback, Hwhatting and Zompist. I didn't exactly have gender-agreement in mind, but something more like, say, regular derivation, where, e.g., "interesting" refers to humans, and "interesting-SUFFIX" refers to interesting objects/events/ideas. The language doesn't necessarily need to have gender at all or gender/number-concord between nouns and adjectives, though I suppose having such a distinction as that described would go along with gender. Having separate words for every single adjective when referring to humans vs. when referring to objects, events, and ideas doesn't seem too efficient. And there are indeed terms, like "pretty", only applicable to humans or non-humans. But maybe one or more natlangs has a certain class of adjectives which behave in the way I'm thinking of?

[Salmoneus]

Thanks for your feedback, Hwhatting and Zompist. I didn't exactly have gender-agreement in mind, but something more like, say, regular derivation, where, e.g., "interesting" refers to humans, and "interesting-SUFFIX" refers to interesting objects/events/ideas.

That is gender. With human as the unmarked gender.