After buying this for my daughter on Switch I noticed she was never talking to villagers - only gifting. I tried it myself and found that I could not easily talk to villagers either. The primary action button would always be gifting the currently held item and there is no obvious way to hold...
I named my cat Elliott and 90% of the time talking to Elliott doesn't work, I click him but nothing happens. I am still able to give him gifts and his heart events work normally. This is fixable on PC via save editing but not on Switch, so I was advised to post this here.