Abstract
The paper focuses on how the semantic category of animacy manifests itself in several fields of Czech grammar and how it may affect learning Czech as a foreign language. So far, animacy in Czech has been viewed as a grammatical category finding its expression especially in separate masculine declensions.
However, animacy deserves more attention, since it affects the interpretation and grammaticality of various syntactic constructions. The paper also attempts to answer the question how animacy influences second language acquisition: whether it helps the learners as a language universal, or rather makes their life harder because of its miscellaneous effects in individual languages.