I have read that some Ukrainian inanimate nouns, such as лист, can optionally take singular-accusative in -а, i.e. they are treated gramatically as animate nouns, e.g. він написав листа instead of він написав лист.
In this question I'll call this feature 'facultative animacy', although sometimes the same phenomenon is explained by saying that the object of the verb is in the genitive instead of accusative.
I would like to know more about facultative animacy is in Ukrainian. Are there a lot of nouns such as лист? Do such nouns belong to specific classes with common meanings? What is the perceived stylistic charge (if any) of facultative animacy?
In this question I'll call this feature 'facultative animacy', although sometimes the same phenomenon is explained by saying that the object of the verb is in the genitive instead of accusative.
I would like to know more about facultative animacy is in Ukrainian. Are there a lot of nouns such as лист? Do such nouns belong to specific classes with common meanings? What is the perceived stylistic charge (if any) of facultative animacy?