The Sumerian language of ancient Sumer was spoken in Southern Mesopotamia from
at least the 4th millennium BC. Sumerian was replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language around 2000 BC, but continued to be used as
a sacred, ceremonial and scientific language in Mesopotamia until about 1 AD. Then, it was forgotten until the 19th century. Sumerian is distinguished from other languages of the area such as
Hebrew, Akkadian, which also comprises Babylonian
and Assyrian, and Aramaic, which are Semitic languages, and
Elamite, which is an Elamo-Dravidian language.
Decipherment
Classification
Sumerian is the first known written language. Its script, called cuneiform, meaning "wedge-shaped", was later also used for Akkadian, Ugaritic and Elamite. It was even adapted to Indo-European languages like Hittite (which also had a hieroglyphic script, as did
the Egyptians) and Old
Persian, though the latter merely used the same instruments, and the letter shapes were unrelated.
Sumerian is an agglutinative language, meaning that
words could consist of a chain of more or less clearly distinguishable and separable suffixes.
Sumerian is a split ergative language. In an ergative language
the subject of a sentence with a direct object is in the so-called ergative case, which in Sumerian is marked with the suffix
-e. The subject of an intransitive verb and the direct object (of a transitive verb) are in the absolutive case, which in
Sumerian, and most ergative languages, is marked by no suffix (or the so-called "zero suffix"). Example: lugal-e e2 mu-du3
"the king built the house"; lugal ba-gen "the king went". A split ergative language is one that behaves as ergative in
some contexts and as a nominative-accusative language (like English) in others. Sumerian behaves as a
nominative-accusative language e.g. in the 1st and 2nd person of present-future tense/incompletive aspect (aka maruu-conjugation), but as ergative in most other instances. Similar patterns are found in a large
number of unrelated split ergative languages (see more examples at
split ergativity). Example: i3-du-un (<< *i3-du-en) =
I shall go; e2 i3-du3-un (<< *i3-du3-en) = I shall build the house (in contrast with the 3 person past tense forms,
see above). Besides, Sumerian is a language with Suffixaufnahme (see
more at the relevant entry).
It has an animate/inanimate word class distinction. Sumerian has also been claimed to have two tenses (past and
present-future), but these are currently described as completive and incompletive aspects instead. There is a large number of cases -
nominative, ergative, genitive, dative, locative, comitative, equative ("as, like"), terminative ("to"), ablative ("from"), etc (the exact list
varies somewhat in different grammars).
Another characteristic feature of Sumerian is the large number of homophones
(words with the same sound structure but different meanings) - or perhaps pseudo-homophones, since there might have been
differences in pronunciation that we don't know about. The different homophones (and the different cuneiform signs that denote them) are marked with different numbers by convention, 2 and 3 being replaced
by acute and grave accent diacritics repectively. For example: du = to go, du3 = dù = to build.
Sumerian has been controversially identified as genetically related with almost every known agglutinative language. As the most ancient known language, it
has a peculiar prestige, and such proposals sometimes have a nationalistic background and generally enjoy little popularity in
the linguistic community because of their unverifiability. Examples of suggested related languages include the Hurro-Urartian languages (see Subarian, Alarodian), the Basque language, the Dravidian
language (see Elamo-Dravidian), Munda languages (Igor M. Diakonoff), Ural-Altaic languages such as Hungarian (Miklos Erdy) and Tibeto-Burman (Jan Braun). More credibility is given to inclusion of Sumerian in proposed
super-families like Nostratic or Dene-Sino-Caucasian, but the
mere identifiability of these is itself controversial. Sumerian is by definition descended from the Proto-World language.
Grammar
Verb
The Sumerian verb has two conjugations, transitive and intransitive, and two aspects, referred to as hamtu and
maru (following the terms in Akkadian grammars of Sumerian).
The verbal endings are:
- 1st person, sg., intransitive, -en
- 1st person, pl., intransitive, -en-dè-en
- 2nd person, pl., intransitive, -en-zè-en
Bibliography
- Edzard, Dietz Otto. (2003) Sumerian Grammar.
- Hayes, John L. (2000) A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts.
- Thomsen, Marie-Louise. (2001). The Sumerian Language: An Introduction to Its History and Grammatical Structure.
- Volk, Konrad. (1997) A Sumerian Reader.
External links
In addition to the links listed in the entry on Sumer, (particularly The Sumerian Language
Page (http://www.sumerian.org/sumerian.htm) and the links there), there are
some rather specialized linguistic articles on Sumerian grammar available on the Net:
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