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Sumerian (Cuneiform: " native tongue") is the language of ancient
Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of c ...
. It is one of the oldest attested languages, dating back to at least 3000 BC. It is accepted to be a local
language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The num ...
and to have been spoken in ancient
Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
, in the area that is modern-day
Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
.
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
, a Semitic language, gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language in the area around 2000 BC (the exact date is debated), but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Akkadian-speaking Mesopotamian states such as
Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...
and
Babylonia Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c. ...
until the 1st century AD. Thereafter it seems to have fallen into obscurity until the 19th century, when
Assyriologists Assyriology (from Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , ''-logia'') is the archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic study of Assyria and the rest of ancient Mesopotamia (a region that encompassed what is now modern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeas ...
began
deciphering In philology, decipherment is the discovery of the meaning of texts written in ancient or obscure languages or scripts. Decipherment in cryptography refers to decryption. The term is used sardonically in everyday language to describe attempts to ...
the
cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...
inscriptions and excavated tablets that had been left by its speakers.


Stages

The history of written Sumerian can be divided into several periods: *Archaic Sumerian – 31st–26th century BC *Old or Classical Sumerian – 26th–23rd century BC *Neo-Sumerian – 23rd–21st century BC *Late Sumerian – 20th–18th century BC *Post-Sumerian – after 1700 BC. Archaic Sumerian is the earliest stage of inscriptions with linguistic content, beginning with the
Jemdet Nasr Jemdet Nasr ( ar, جمدة نصر) is a tell or settlement mound in Babil Governorate (Iraq) that is best known as the eponymous type site for the Jemdet Nasr period (3100–2900 BC), and was one of the oldest Sumerian cities. The site was first ...
(Uruk III) period from about the 31st to 30th centuries BC. It succeeds the proto-literate period, which spans roughly the 35th to 30th centuries. Some versions of the chronology may omit the Late Sumerian phase and regard all texts written after 2000 BC as Post-Sumerian. The term "Post-Sumerian" is meant to refer to the time when the language was already extinct and preserved by
Babylonia Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c. ...
ns and
Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...
ns only as a
liturgical Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. ''Liturgy'' can also be used to refer specifically to public worship by Christians. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and partic ...
and
classical language A classical language is any language with an independent literary tradition and a large and ancient body of written literature. Classical languages are typically dead languages, or show a high degree of diglossia, as the spoken varieties of the ...
for religious, artistic and scholarly purposes. The extinction has traditionally been dated approximately to the end of the
Third Dynasty of Ur The Third Dynasty of Ur, also called the Neo-Sumerian Empire, refers to a 22nd to 21st century Common Era, BC (middle chronology) Sumerian ruling dynasty based in the city of Ur and a short-lived territorial-political state which some historians c ...
, the last predominantly Sumerian state in Mesopotamia, about 2000 BC. However, that date is very approximate, as many scholars have contended that Sumerian was already dead or dying as early as around 2100 BC, by the beginning of the Ur III period, and others believe that Sumerian persisted, as a spoken language, in a small part of Southern Mesopotamia (
Nippur Nippur (Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''Nibru'', often logogram, logographically recorded as , EN.LÍLKI, "Enlil City;"The Cambridge Ancient History: Prolegomena & Prehistory': Vol. 1, Part 1. Accessed 15 Dec 2010. Akkadian language, Akkadian: '' ...
and its surroundings) until as late as 1700 BC. Whatever the status of spoken Sumerian between 2000 and 1700 BC, it is from then that a particularly large quantity of literary texts and bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian
lexical lists The cuneiform lexical lists are a series of ancient Mesopotamian glossaries which preserve the semantics of Sumerograms, their phonetic value and their Akkadian or other language equivalents. They are the oldest literary texts from Mesopotamia a ...
survive, especially from the scribal school of Nippur. They and the particularly intensive official and literary use of the language in Akkadian-speaking states during the same time call for a distinction between the Late Sumerian and the Post-Sumerian periods. Sumerian school documents from the
Sealand Dynasty The First Sealand dynasty, (URU.KÙKIWhere ŠEŠ-ḪA of King List A and ŠEŠ-KÙ-KI of King List B are read as URU.KÙ.KI) or the 2nd Dynasty of Babylon (although it was independent of Amorite-ruled Babylon), very speculatively c. 1732–1460 B ...
were found at
Tell Khaiber Tell Khaiber () is a tell, or archaeological settlement mound, in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). It is located thirteen kilometers west of the modern city of Nasiriyah, about 19 kilometers northwest of the ancient city of Ur in Dhiq Q ...
, some of which contain year names from the reign of a king with the Sumerian throne name Aya-dara-galama.


Dialects

The standard variety of Sumerian was ''Emegir'' ( ). A notable variety or sociolect was ''Emesal'' ( eme-sal), possibly to be interpreted as "fine tongue" or "high-pitched voice" . Other terms for dialects or registers were ''eme-galam'' "high tongue", ''eme-si-sa'' "straight tongue", ''eme-te-na'' "oblique tongue", etc. ''Emesal'' is used exclusively by female characters in some literary texts (that may be compared to the female languages or language varieties that exist or have existed in some cultures, such as among the
Chukchis The Chukchi, or Chukchee ( ckt, Ԓыгъоравэтԓьэт, О'равэтԓьэт, ''Ḷygʺoravètḷʹèt, O'ravètḷʹèt''), are a Siberian indigenous people native to the Chukchi Peninsula, the shores of the Chukchi Sea and the Berin ...
and the
Garifuna The Garifuna people ( or ; pl. Garínagu in Garifuna) are a people of mixed free African and indigenous American ancestry that originated in the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent and speak Garifuna, an Arawakan language, and Vincentian ...
). In addition, it is dominant in certain genres of cult songs such as the hymns sung by
Gala Gala may refer to: Music * ''Gala'' (album), a 1990 album by the English alternative rock band Lush *''Gala – The Collection'', a 2016 album by Sarah Brightman *GALA Choruses, an association of LGBT choral groups *''Gala'', a 1986 album by Th ...
priests. The special features of ''Emesal'' are mostly phonological (for example, ''m'' is often used instead of ''g̃'' .e. as in ''me'' instead of standard ''g̃e26'' for "I"), but words different from the standard language are also used (''ga-ša-an'' rather than standard ''nin'', "lady").


Classification

Sumerian is a
language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The num ...
. Ever since decipherment, it has been the subject of much effort to relate it to a wide variety of languages. Because it has a peculiar prestige as one of the most ancient written languages, proposals for linguistic affinity sometimes have a nationalistic background. Such proposals enjoy virtually no support among linguists because of their unverifiability. Sumerian was at one time widely held to be an
Indo-European language The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
, but that view later came to be almost universally rejected. Among its proposed linguistic affiliates are: *
Kartvelian languages The Kartvelian languages (; ka, ქართველური ენები, tr; also known as South Caucasian, Kartvelic, and Iberian languagesBoeder (2002), p. 3) are a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primari ...
(
Nicholas Marr Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr (, ''Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr''; , ''Nikoloz Iak'obis dze Mari''; — 20 December 1934) was a Georgian-born historian and linguist who gained a reputation as a scholar of the Caucasus during the 1910s before embarking o ...
) *
Austroasiatic languages The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are t ...
, specifically
Munda languages The Munda languages are a group of closely related languages spoken by about nine million people in India and Bangladesh. Historically, they have been called the Kolarian languages. They constitute a branch of the Austroasiatic language famil ...
(
Igor M. Diakonoff Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff (occasionally spelled Diakonov, russian: link=no, И́горь Миха́йлович Дья́конов; 12 January 1915 – 2 May 1999) was a Russian historian, linguist, and translator and a renowned expert on th ...
) *
Dravidian languages The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant ...
(A. Sathasivam) *
Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
(
Simo Parpola Simo Kaarlo Antero Parpola (born 4 July 1943) is a Finnish Assyriologist specializing in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Professor emeritus of Assyriology at the University of Helsinki (retired fall 2009). Career Simo Parpola studied Assyriology, C ...
(work in process)) or, more generally,
Ural–Altaic languages Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Altaic or Uraltaic is a linguistic convergence zone and former language-family proposal uniting the Uralic and the Altaic (in the narrow sense) languages. It is generally now agreed that even the Altaic languages do not share ...
(Simo Parpola, C. G. Gostony, András Zakar, Ida Bobula) * Basque language *
Nostratic languages Nostratic is a controversial hypothetical macrofamily, which includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, although its exact composition and structure vary among proponents. It typically comprises Kartvelian, Indo-European and Ur ...
(
Allan Bomhard Allan R. Bomhard (born 1943) is an American linguist. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he was educated at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Hunter College, and the City University of New York, and served in the U.S. Army from 1964 to 1966. He curr ...
) *
Sino-Tibetan languages Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...
, specifically
Tibeto-Burman languages The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak ...
(Jan Braun,. following C. J. Ball, V. Christian, K. Bouda, and V. Emeliyanov) *
Dené–Caucasian languages Dené–Caucasian is a proposed language family that includes widely-separated language groups spoken in the Northern Hemisphere: Sino-Tibetan languages, Yeniseian languages, Burushaski and North Caucasian languages in Asia; Na-Dené languages in ...
(
John Bengtson John D. Bengtson (born 1948) is an American historical and anthropological linguist. He is past president and currently vice-president of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory, and has served as editor (or co-editor) of the jour ...
) It has also been suggested that the Sumerian language descended from a late
prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...
creole language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...
(Høyrup 1992). However, no conclusive evidence, only some typological features, can be found to support Høyrup's view. A more widespread hypothesis posits a
Proto-Euphratean language Proto-Euphratean is a hypothetical unclassified language or languages which was considered by some Assyriologists (for example, Samuel Noah Kramer) to be the substratum language of the people who introduced farming into Southern Iraq in the Early U ...
that preceded Sumerian in Southern Mesopotamia and exerted an areal influence on it, especially in the form of polysyllabic words that appear "un-Sumerian"—making them suspect of being
loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
s—and are not traceable to any other known language. There is little speculation as to the affinities of this
substratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
language, or these languages, and it is thus best treated as
unclassified Classified information is material that a government body deems to be sensitive information that must be protected. Access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of people with the necessary security clearance and need to know, ...
. Researchers such as Gonzalo Rubio disagree with the assumption of a single substratum language and argue that several languages are involved. A related proposal by Gordon Whittaker is that the language of the proto-literary texts from the Late Uruk period ( 3350–3100 BC) is really an early Indo-European language which he terms "Euphratic".


Writing system


Development

The Sumerian language is one of the earliest known written languages. The "proto-literate" period of Sumerian writing spans c. 3300 to 3000 BC. In this period, records are purely
logographic In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, a ...
, with no phonological content. The oldest document of the proto-literate period is the
Kish tablet The Kish tablet is a limestone tablet found at the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Kish in modern-day Tell al-Uhaymir, Babil Governorate, Iraq. A plaster-cast of the artifact is today in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum. The origina ...
.
Falkenstein Falkenstein or Falckenstein ("falcons' stone" in German) may refer to: Places Austria * Falkenstein, Lower Austria, a market town in the district of Mistelbach Germany * Falkenstein, Bavaria, a market town in the district of Cham * Falkenst ...
(1936) lists 939 signs used in the proto-literate period (
late Uruk The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BC; also known as Protoliterate period) existed from the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia, after the Ubaid period and before the Jemdet Nasr period. Named after ...
, 34th to 31st centuries). Records with unambiguously linguistic content, identifiably Sumerian, are those found at
Jemdet Nasr Jemdet Nasr ( ar, جمدة نصر) is a tell or settlement mound in Babil Governorate (Iraq) that is best known as the eponymous type site for the Jemdet Nasr period (3100–2900 BC), and was one of the oldest Sumerian cities. The site was first ...
, dating to the 31st or 30th century BC. From about 2600 BC, the logographic symbols were generalized using a wedge-shaped stylus to impress the shapes into wet clay. This ''cuneiform'' ("wedge-shaped") mode of writing co-existed with the pre-cuneiform archaic mode. Deimel (1922) lists 870 signs used in the Early Dynastic IIIa period (26th century). In the same period the large set of logographic signs had been simplified into a logosyllabic script comprising several hundred signs. Rosengarten (1967) lists 468 signs used in Sumerian (pre- Sargonian)
Lagash Lagash (cuneiform: LAGAŠKI; Sumerian: ''Lagaš''), was an ancient city state located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and east of Uruk, about east of the modern town of Ash Shatrah, Iraq. Lagash (modern Al-Hiba) w ...
. The pre-Sargonian period of the 26th to 24th centuries BC is the "Classical Sumerian" stage of the language. The cuneiform script was adapted to
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
writing beginning in the mid-third millennium. Over the long period of bi-lingual overlap of active Sumerian and Akkadian usage the two languages influenced each other, as reflected in numerous loanwords and even word order changes.


Transcription

Depending on the context, a cuneiform sign can be read either as one of several possible
logograms In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced ''hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, as ...
, each of which corresponds to a word in the Sumerian spoken language, as a phonetic syllable (V, VC, CV, or CVC), or as a
determinative A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may ...
(a marker of semantic category, such as occupation or place). (See the article
Transliterating cuneiform languages Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sh ...
.) Some Sumerian logograms were written with multiple cuneiform signs. These logograms are called diri-spellings, after the logogram 'diri' which is written with the signs SI and A. The text transliteration of a tablet will show just the logogram, such as the word 'diri', not the separate component signs. Not all epigraphists are equally reliable, and before publication of an important treatment of a text, scholars will often arrange to collate the published transcription against the actual tablet, to see if any signs, especially broken or damaged signs, should be represented differently.


Historiography

: '' DNa-ra-am D Sîn'', ''Sîn'' being written 𒂗𒍪 EN.ZU), appears vertically in the right column. British Museum. The key to reading
logosyllabic In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, a ...
cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...
came from the Behistun inscription, a trilingual cuneiform inscription written in
Old Persian Old Persian is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan language, Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native ...
,
Elamite Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was used in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite works disappear from the archeological record ...
and
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
. (In a similar manner, the key to understanding
Egyptian hieroglyphs Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...
was the bilingual (Greek and Egyptian with the Egyptian text in two scripts)
Rosetta stone The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a Rosetta Stone decree, decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle te ...
and Jean-François Champollion's transcription in 1822.) In 1838 Henry Rawlinson, building on the 1802 work of
Georg Friedrich Grotefend Georg Friedrich Grotefend (9 June 1775 – 15 December 1853) was a German epigraphist and philologist. He is known mostly for his contributions toward the decipherment of cuneiform. Georg Friedrich Grotefend had a son, named Carl Ludwig Grot ...
, was able to
decipher DECIPHER is a web-based resource and database of genomic variation data from analysis of patient DNA. It documents submicroscopic Chromosome abnormality, chromosome abnormalities (Deletion (genetics), microdeletions and Gene duplication, duplic ...
the Old Persian section of the Behistun inscriptions, using his knowledge of modern Persian. When he recovered the rest of the text in 1843, he and others were gradually able to translate the Elamite and Akkadian sections of it, starting with the 37 signs he had deciphered for the Old Persian. Meanwhile, many more cuneiform texts were coming to light from
archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
excavations, mostly in the Semitic
Akkadian language Akkadian (, Akkadian: )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218-280 is an extinct East Semitic language th ...
, which were duly deciphered. By 1850, however,
Edward Hincks Edward Hincks (19 August 1792 – 3 December 1866) was an Irish clergyman, best remembered as an Assyriologist and one of the decipherers of Mesopotamian cuneiform. He was one of the three men known as the "holy trinity of cuneiform", with S ...
came to suspect a non-Semitic origin for cuneiform. Semitic languages are structured according to consonantal forms, whereas cuneiform, when functioning phonetically, was a
syllabary In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optiona ...
, binding consonants to particular vowels. Furthermore, no Semitic words could be found to explain the syllabic values given to particular signs.
Julius Oppert Julius (Jules) Oppert (9 July 1825 – 21 August 1905) was a French-German Assyriologist, born in Hamburg of Jewish parents. Career After studying at Heidelberg, Bonn and Berlin, he graduated at Kiel in 1847, and the next year went to France, wh ...
suggested that a non-Semitic language had preceded Akkadian in Mesopotamia, and that speakers of this language had developed the cuneiform script. In 1855 Rawlinson announced the discovery of non-Semitic inscriptions at the southern Babylonian sites of
Nippur Nippur (Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''Nibru'', often logogram, logographically recorded as , EN.LÍLKI, "Enlil City;"The Cambridge Ancient History: Prolegomena & Prehistory': Vol. 1, Part 1. Accessed 15 Dec 2010. Akkadian language, Akkadian: '' ...
,
Larsa Larsa ( Sumerian logogram: UD.UNUGKI, read ''Larsamki''), also referred to as Larancha/Laranchon (Gk. Λαραγχων) by Berossos and connected with the biblical Ellasar, was an important city-state of ancient Sumer, the center of the cul ...
, and
Uruk Uruk, also known as Warka or Warkah, was an ancient city of Sumer (and later of Babylonia) situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates River on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates east of modern Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Harm ...
. In 1856, Hincks argued that the untranslated language was
agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...
in character. The language was called "Scythic" by some, and, confusingly, "Akkadian" by others. In 1869, Oppert proposed the name "Sumerian", based on the known title "King of Sumer and Akkad", reasoning that if
Akkad Akkad may refer to: *Akkad (city), the capital of the Akkadian Empire *Akkadian Empire, the first ancient empire of Mesopotamia *Akkad SC, Iraqi football club People with the name *Abbas el-Akkad, Egyptian writer *Abdulrahman Akkad, Syrian LGBT act ...
signified the Semitic portion of the kingdom,
Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of c ...
might describe the non-Semitic annex. Credit for being first to scientifically treat a bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian text belongs to
Paul Haupt Hermann Hugo Paul Haupt (25 November 1858 in Görlitz – 15 December 1926 in Baltimore, Maryland) was a Semitic scholar, one of the pioneers of Assyriology in the United States. He studied at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig. In 1880 he be ...
, who published ''Die sumerischen Familiengesetze'' (The Sumerian family laws) in 1879.
Ernest de Sarzec Ernest Choquin de Sarzec (1832–1901) was a French archaeologist, to whom is attributed the discovery of the civilization of ancient Sumer. He was in the French diplomatic service; on being transferred to Basra in 1872 as a vice-consul, he bec ...
began excavating the Sumerian site of Tello (ancient Girsu, capital of the state of
Lagash Lagash (cuneiform: LAGAŠKI; Sumerian: ''Lagaš''), was an ancient city state located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and east of Uruk, about east of the modern town of Ash Shatrah, Iraq. Lagash (modern Al-Hiba) w ...
) in 1877, and published the first part of ''Découvertes en Chaldée'' with transcriptions of Sumerian tablets in 1884. The
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
began excavating Sumerian
Nippur Nippur (Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''Nibru'', often logogram, logographically recorded as , EN.LÍLKI, "Enlil City;"The Cambridge Ancient History: Prolegomena & Prehistory': Vol. 1, Part 1. Accessed 15 Dec 2010. Akkadian language, Akkadian: '' ...
in 1888. ''A Classified List of Sumerian Ideographs'' by R. Brünnow appeared in 1889. The bewildering number and variety of phonetic values that signs could have in Sumerian led to a detour in understanding the language – a
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
-based orientalist,
Joseph Halévy __NOTOC__ Joseph Halévy (15 December 1827, in Adrianople – 21 January 1917, in Paris) was an Ottoman born Jewish-French Orientalist and traveller. His most notable work was done in Yemen, which he crossed during 1869 to 1870 in search of Sab ...
, argued from 1874 onward that Sumerian was not a natural language, but rather a
secret code Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...
(a
cryptolect A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argot ...
), and for over a decade the leading Assyriologists battled over this issue. For a dozen years, starting in 1885,
Friedrich Delitzsch Friedrich Delitzsch (; 3 September 1850 – 19 December 1922) was a German Assyriologist. He was the son of Lutheran theologian Franz Delitzsch (1813–1890). Born in Erlangen, he studied in Leipzig and Berlin, gaining his habilitation in 1874 as ...
accepted Halévy's arguments, not renouncing Halévy until 1897.
François Thureau-Dangin François Thureau-Dangin (3 January 1872 in Paris – 24 January 1944 in Paris) was a French archaeologist, assyriologist and epigrapher. He played a major role in deciphering of the Sumerian and Akkadian languages. He studied under Julius ...
working at the Louvre in Paris also made significant contributions to deciphering Sumerian with publications from 1898 to 1938, such as his 1905 publication of ''Les inscriptions de Sumer et d'Akkad''.
Charles Fossey Charles Fossey (29 July 1869 – 27 November 1946) was a French assyriologist. In education he was a follower and colleague of Émile Durkheim. Living at the turn of the century, he made a significant contribution to Assyriology and studied the m ...
at the Collège de France in Paris was another prolific and reliable scholar. His pioneering ''Contribution au Dictionnaire sumérien–assyrien'', Paris 1905–1907, turns out to provide the foundation for P. Anton Deimel's 1934 ''Sumerisch-Akkadisches Glossar'' (vol. III of Deimel's 4-volume ''Sumerisches Lexikon''). In 1908,
Stephen Herbert Langdon Stephen Herbert Langdon (1876May 19, 1937) was an American-born British Assyriologist. Born to George Knowles and Abigail Hassinger Langdon in Monroe, Michigan, Langdon studied at the University of Michigan, participating in Phi Beta Kappa and ...
summarized the rapid expansion in knowledge of Sumerian and Akkadian vocabulary in the pages of ''Babyloniaca'', a journal edited by
Charles Virolleaud Jean Charles Gabriel Virolleaud (2 July 1879 – 17 December 1968) was a French archaeologist, one of the excavators of Ugarit. Virolleaud was the author of ''La légende du Christ'' (1908) and was an advocate of the Christ myth theory. He also w ...
, in an article "Sumerian-Assyrian Vocabularies", which reviewed a valuable new book on rare logograms by Bruno Meissner. Subsequent scholars have found Langdon's work, including his tablet transcriptions, to be not entirely reliable. In 1944, the Sumerologist
Samuel Noah Kramer Samuel Noah Kramer (September 28, 1897 – November 26, 1990) was one of the world's leading Assyriologists, an expert in Sumerian history and Sumerian language. After high school, he attended Temple University, before Dropsie and Penn, both in ...
provided a detailed and readable summary of the decipherment of Sumerian in his ''Sumerian Mythology''. Friedrich Delitzsch published a learned Sumerian dictionary and grammar in the form of his ''Sumerisches Glossar'' and ''Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik'', both appearing in 1914. Delitzsch's student,
Arno Poebel Arno Poebel (1881–1958) was a German Assyriologist. He studied theology and classical philology in Heidelberg, Marburg, Zürich and Jena. In 1905/6, he worked with Sumerian documents at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology an ...
, published a grammar with the same title, ''Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik'', in 1923, and for 50 years it would be the standard for students studying Sumerian. Poebel's grammar was finally superseded in 1984 on the publication of ''The Sumerian Language: An Introduction to its History and Grammatical Structure'', by
Marie-Louise Thomsen Marie Louise or Marie-Louise may refer to: People *Marie Louise of Orléans (1662–1689), daughter of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, queen consort of Charles II of Spain *Marie Louise of Hesse-Kassel (1688–1765), daughter of Charles I, Landgrave ...
. While much of Thomsen's understanding of Sumerian grammar would later be rejected by most or all Sumerologists, Thomsen's grammar (often with express mention of the critiques put forward by Pascal Attinger in his 1993 ''Eléments de linguistique sumérienne: La construction de du11/e/di 'dire'') is the starting point of most recent academic discussions of Sumerian grammar. More recent monograph-length grammars of Sumerian include
Dietz-Otto Edzard Dietz-Otto Edzard (28 August 1930 in Bremen – 2 June 2004 in Munich) was a German scholar of the Ancient Near East and grammarian of the Sumerian language. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences i ...
's 2003 ''Sumerian Grammar'' and Bram Jagersma's 2010 ''A Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian'' (currently digital, but soon to be printed in revised form by Oxford University Press). Piotr Michalowski's essay (entitled, simply, "Sumerian") in the 2004 ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages'' has also been recognized as a good modern grammatical sketch. There is relatively little consensus, even among reasonable Sumerologists, in comparison to the state of most modern or classical languages. Verbal morphology, in particular, is hotly disputed. In addition to the general grammars, there are many monographs and articles about particular areas of Sumerian grammar, without which a survey of the field could not be considered complete. The primary institutional lexical effort in Sumerian is the
Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (PSD) is a project to compile a comprehensive dictionary of the Sumerian language. It is run out of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and funded by both private donors and ...
project, begun in 1974. In 2004, the PSD was released on the Web as the ePSD. The project is currently supervised by Steve Tinney. It has not been updated online since 2006, but Tinney and colleagues are working on a new edition of the ePSD, a working draft of which is available online.


Phonology

Assumed phonological or morphological forms will be between slashes //, with plain text used for the standard Assyriological transcription of Sumerian. Most of the following examples are unattested.


Phonemic inventory

Modern knowledge of Sumerian phonology is flawed and incomplete because of the lack of speakers, the transmission through the filter of
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
phonology and the difficulties posed by the cuneiform script. As
I. M. Diakonoff Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff (occasionally spelled Diakonov, russian: link=no, И́горь Миха́йлович Дья́конов; 12 January 1915 – 2 May 1999) was a Russian historian, linguist, and translator and a renowned expert on th ...
observes, "when we try to find out the morphophonological structure of the Sumerian language, we must constantly bear in mind that we are not dealing with a language directly but are reconstructing it from a very imperfect mnemonic writing system which had not been basically aimed at the rendering of morphophonemics".


Consonants

Sumerian is conjectured to have at least the following consonants: * a simple distribution of six
stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
s, in three
places of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
distinguished by aspiration, though later stages may have featured voicing: ** p ( voiceless aspirated bilabial plosive), ** t ( voiceless aspirated alveolar plosive), ** k ( voiceless aspirated velar plosive), *** As a rule, , and did not occur word-finally. ** b ( voiced unaspirated bilabial plosive), ** d ( voiced unaspirated alveolar plosive), ** g ( voiced unaspirated velar plosive). * a
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
usually represented by /ř/ (sometimes written ''dr'') that was probably a voiceless aspirated alveolar affricate. This phoneme later became or in northern and southern dialects, respectively. * a simple distribution of three
nasal consonants In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majorit ...
in similar distribution to the stops: ** m (
bilabial nasal The voiced bilabial nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is m. The bilabial nasal occurs in ...
), ** n (
alveolar nasal The voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ...
), ** g̃ (frequently printed ĝ due to typesetting constraints, increasingly transcribed as ŋ) (likely a
velar nasal The voiced velar nasal, also known as agma, from the Greek word for 'fragment', is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''Englis ...
, as in ''sing'', it has also been argued to be a labiovelar nasal or a
nasalized In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . In the Internationa ...
labiovelar). * a set of three
sibilants Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...
: ** s, likely a
voiceless alveolar fricative The voiceless alveolar fricatives are a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at least ...
, ** z, likely a voiceless unaspirated alveolar affricate, , as shown by Akkadian loans from = to Sumerian . In early Sumerian, this would have been the unaspirated counterpart to /ř/. ** š (generally described as a
voiceless postalveolar fricative A voiceless postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiceless postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describes the voiceless ...
, , as in ''ship'') * ḫ (a
velar fricative A velar fricative is a fricative consonant produced at the velar place of articulation. It is possible to distinguish the following kinds of velar fricatives: *Voiced velar fricative, a consonant sound written as in the International Phonetic Alph ...
, , sometimes written h) * two
liquid consonant In phonetics, liquids are a class of consonants consisting of voiced lateral approximants like together with rhotics like . Etymology The grammarian Dionysius Thrax used the Ancient Greek word (, ) to describe the sonorant consonants () of cl ...
s: ** l (a
lateral consonant A lateral is a consonant in which the airstream proceeds along one or both of the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. An example of a lateral consonant is the English ''L'', as in ''Larr ...
) ** r (a
rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthography, orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek alphabet, Greek letter Rho (letter), rho, including R, , in the Latin ...
) The existence of various other consonants has been hypothesized based on graphic alternations and loans, though none have found wide acceptance. For example,
Diakonoff Dyakonov (russian: Дьяконов (masculine), russian: Дьяконова (feminine)), Diakonoff, Diakonov, or Diakonof is a Russian surname meaning "a deacon's". Notable people with the surname include: * Anatoly Dyakonov (1907–1972), Soviet ...
lists evidence for two l-sounds, two r-sounds, two h-sounds, and two g-sounds (excluding the velar nasal), and assumes a phonemic difference between consonants that are dropped word-finally (such as the ''g'' in zag > ''za3'') and consonants that remain (such as the ''g'' in ''lag''). Other "hidden" consonant phonemes that have been suggested include semivowels such as and , and a
glottal fricative Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the glottal fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants ...
or a
glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
that could explain the absence of vowel contraction in some words—though objections have been raised against that as well. A recent descriptive grammar by Bram Jagersma includes , , and as unwritten consonants, with the glottal stop even serving as the first-person pronominal prefix. Very often, a word-final consonant was not expressed in writing—and was possibly omitted in pronunciation—so it surfaced only when followed by a vowel: for example the /k/ of the
genitive case In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
ending ''-ak'' does not appear in ''e2 lugal-la'' "the king's house", but it becomes obvious in ''e2 lugal-la-kam'' "(it) is the king's house" (compare
liaison Liaison means communication between two or more groups, or co-operation or working together. Liaison or liaisons may refer to: General usage * Affair, an unfaithful sexual relationship * Collaboration * Co-operation Arts and entertainment * Li ...
in French).


Vowels

The vowels that are clearly distinguished by the cuneiform script are , , , and . Various researchers have posited the existence of more vowel phonemes such as and even and , which would have been concealed by the transmission through Akkadian, as that language does not distinguish them. That would explain the seeming existence of numerous homophones in transliterated Sumerian, as well as some details of the phenomena mentioned in the next paragraph. These hypotheses are not yet generally accepted. There is some evidence for
vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...
according to
vowel height A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
or
advanced tongue root In phonetics, advanced tongue root (ATR) and retracted tongue root (RTR) are contrasting states of the root of the tongue during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in Western and Eastern Africa, but also in Kazakh and Mong ...
in the prefix i3/e- in inscriptions from pre- Sargonic
Lagash Lagash (cuneiform: LAGAŠKI; Sumerian: ''Lagaš''), was an ancient city state located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and east of Uruk, about east of the modern town of Ash Shatrah, Iraq. Lagash (modern Al-Hiba) w ...
,Smith, Eric J M. 2007.
ATR ATR may refer to: Medicine * Acute transfusion reaction * Ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3 related, a protein involved in DNA damage repair Science and mathematics * Advanced Test Reactor, nuclear research reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, ...
"Harmony and the Vowel Inventory of Sumerian". ''Journal of Cuneiform Studies'', volume 57
and perhaps even more than one vowel harmony rule.Keetman, J. 2009.
The limits of TR">The limits of [ATR
/nowiki> vowel harmony in Sumerian and some remarks about the need of transparent data. Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires 2009, No. 65
Keetman, J. 2013. "Die sumerische Wurzelharmonie". Babel und Bibel 7 p.109-154 There also appear to be many cases of partial or complete
assimilation of the vowel of certain prefixes and suffixes to one in the adjacent syllable reflected in writing in some of the later periods, and there is a noticeable, albeit not absolute, tendency for disyllabic stems to have the same vowel in both syllables. These patterns, too, are interpreted as evidence for a richer vowel inventory by some researchers. What appears to be vowel contraction in hiatus Hiatus may refer to: *Hiatus (anatomy), a natural fissure in a structure *Hiatus (stratigraphy), a discontinuity in the age of strata in stratigraphy *''Hiatus'', a genus of picture-winged flies with sole member species ''Hiatus fulvipes'' *Globa ...
(*/aa/, */ia/, */ua/ > a, */ae/ > a, */ue/ > u, etc.) is also very common. Syllables could have any of the following structures: V, CV, VC, CVC. More complex syllables, if Sumerian had them, are not expressed as such by the cuneiform script.


Grammar

Ever since its decipherment, research of Sumerian has been made difficult not only by the lack of any native speakers, but also by the relative sparseness of linguistic data, the apparent lack of a closely related language, and the features of the writing system.
Typologically, as mentioned above, Sumerian is classified as an
agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...
, split ergativity">split ergative In linguistic typology, split ergativity is a feature of certain languages where some constructions use ergative–absolutive language, ergative syntax and morphology, but other constructions show another pattern, usually nominative–accusative l ...
, and subject-object-verb language. It behaves as a nominative–accusative language in the 1st and 2nd persons of the incomplete tense-
aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
, but as ergative–absolutive language, ergative–absolutive in most other forms of the
indicative mood A realis mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mos ...
. Sumerian nouns are organized in two
grammatical genders In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
based on
animacy Animacy (antonym: inanimacy) is a grammatical and semantic feature, existing in some languages, expressing how sentient or alive the referent of a noun is. Widely expressed, animacy is one of the most elementary principles in languages around th ...
: animate and inanimate. Animate nouns include humans, gods, and in some instances the word for "statue".
Case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to c ...
is indicated by
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
es on the noun. Noun phrases are right branching with adjectives and modifiers following nouns. Sumerian verbs have a tense-
aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
complex Complex commonly refers to: * Complexity, the behaviour of a system whose components interact in multiple ways so possible interactions are difficult to describe ** Complex system, a system composed of many components which may interact with each ...
, contrasting complete and incomplete actions/states. The two have different conjugations and many have different roots. Verbs also mark mood,
voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in ...
,
polarity Polarity may refer to: Science *Electrical polarity, direction of electrical current *Polarity (mutual inductance), the relationship between components such as transformer windings * Polarity (projective geometry), in mathematics, a duality of ord ...
, iterativity, and
intensity Intensity may refer to: In colloquial use *Strength (disambiguation) *Amplitude * Level (disambiguation) * Magnitude (disambiguation) In physical sciences Physics *Intensity (physics), power per unit area (W/m2) *Field strength of electric, ma ...
; and agree with subjects and
objects Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...
in
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
,
person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...
,
animacy Animacy (antonym: inanimacy) is a grammatical and semantic feature, existing in some languages, expressing how sentient or alive the referent of a noun is. Widely expressed, animacy is one of the most elementary principles in languages around th ...
, and
case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to c ...
. Sumerian moods are:
indicative A realis mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Most ...
, imperative,
cohortative In linguistics, hortative modalities (; abbreviated ) are verbal expressions used by the speaker to encourage or discourage an action. Different hortatives can be used to express greater or lesser intensity, or the speaker's attitude, for or a ...
, precative/ affirmative,
prospective aspect In linguistics, the prospective aspect (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical aspect describing an event that occurs subsequent to a given reference time.Matthews, P. H. (1997) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Pr ...
/
cohortative mood In linguistics, hortative modalities (; abbreviated ) are verbal expressions used by the speaker to encourage or discourage an action. Different hortatives can be used to express greater or lesser intensity, or the speaker's attitude, for or a ...
, affirmative/negative- volitive, unrealised- volitive?, negative?, affirmative?, polarative, and are marked by a verbal prefix. The prefixes appear to conflate mood, aspect, and polarity; and their meanings are also affected by the tense-aspect complex. Sumerian voices are:
active Active may refer to: Music * ''Active'' (album), a 1992 album by Casiopea * Active Records, a record label Ships * ''Active'' (ship), several commercial ships by that name * HMS ''Active'', the name of various ships of the British Royal ...
, and middle or
passive Passive may refer to: * Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages, see also Pseudopassive * Passive language, a language from which an interpreter works * Passivity (behavior), the condition of submitting to the influence of on ...
. Verbs are marked for three persons: 1st, 2nd, 3rd; in two numbers:
singular Singular may refer to: * Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms * Singular homology * SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS) * Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...
and
plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
.
Finite verb Traditionally, a finite verb (from la, fīnītus, past participle of to put an end to, bound, limit) is the form "to which number and person appertain", in other words, those inflected for number and person. Verbs were originally said to be ''fin ...
s have three classes of prefixes: modal prefixes, conjugational prefixes, and pronominal/dimensional prefixes. Modal prefixes confer the above moods on the verb. Conjugational prefixes are thought to confer perhaps venitive/andative, being/action,
focus Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to: Arts * Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film *''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore * ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...
, valency, or
voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in ...
distinctions on the verb.
Pronominal In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...
/
dimensional In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus, a line has a dimension of one (1D) because only one coordi ...
prefixes correspond to noun phrases and their cases. Non-finite verbs include
participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
s and
relative clause A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phraseRodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, ''A Student's Introduction to English Grammar'', CUP 2005, p. 183ff. and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments ...
verbs, both formed through
nominalisation In linguistics, nominalization or nominalisation is the use of a word that is not a noun (e.g., a verb, an adjective or an adverb) as a noun, or as the head of a noun phrase. This change in functional category can occur through morphological tra ...
. Finite verbs take prefixes and suffixes, non-finite verbs only take suffixes. Verbal roots are mostly monosyllabic, though verbal root
duplication Duplication, duplicate, and duplicator may refer to: Biology and genetics * Gene duplication, a process which can result in free mutation * Chromosomal duplication, which can cause Bloom and Rett syndrome * Polyploidy, a phenomenon also known ...
and
suppletion In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even ...
can also occur to indicate plurality. Root duplication can also indicate iterativity or intensity of the verb.


Nominal morphology


Noun phrases

The Sumerian
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
is typically a one or two-syllable root (''igi'' "eye", ''e2'' "house, household", ''nin'' "lady"), although there are also some roots with three syllables like ''šakanka'' "market". There are two
grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
s, usually called human and non-human (the first includes gods and the word for "statue" in some instances, but not plants or animals, the latter also includes collective plural nouns), whose assignment is semantically predictable. The
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
s and other
modifiers In linguistics, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure which ''modifies'' the meaning of another element in the structure. For instance, the adjective "red" acts as a modifier in the noun phrase "red ball", provi ...
follow the noun (''lugal maḫ'' "great king"). The noun itself is not inflected; rather, grammatical markers attach to the
noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
as a whole, in a certain order. Typically, that order would be: An example may be /dig̃ir gal-gal-g̃u-ne-ra/ ("god great (
reduplicated In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwar ...
)-my-plural-dative" = "for all my great gods"). The possessive, plural and case markers are traditionally referred to as "
suffixes In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the Stem (linguistics), stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the Grammatical conjugation ...
", but have recently also been described as
enclitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a wo ...
s or
postpositions Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
.Johnson, Cale, 2004: ''In the Eye of the Beholder: Quantificational, Pragmatic and Aspectual Features of the *bí- Verbal Formation in Sumerian'', Dissertation. UCLA, Los Angele

The plural markers are /-(e)ne/ (optional) for nouns of the human gender. Non-human nouns are not marked by a plural suffix. However, plurality can also be expressed with the adjective ''ḫi-a'' "various", with the plural of the copula /-meš/, by reduplication of the noun (''kur-kur'' "all foreign lands") or of the following adjective (''a gal-gal'' "all the great waters") (reduplication is believed to signify totality) or by the plurality of only the verb form. Plural reference in the verb form occurs only for human nouns. The generally recognised case markers are: More endings are recognised by some researchers; e.g. Bram Jagersma notes a separate adverbiative case in /-eš/ and a second locative used mostly with infinite verb forms. Additional spatial or temporal meanings can be expressed by genitive phrases like "at the head of" = "above", "at the face of" = "in front of", "at the outer side of" = "because of" etc.: ''bar udu ḫad2-ak-a'' = "outer.side sheep white-genitive-locative" = "in the outer side of a white sheep" = "because of a white sheep". The center embedding, embedded structure of the noun phrase can be further illustrated with the phrase ''sipad udu siki-ak-ak-ene'' ("the shepherds of woolly sheep"), where the first genitive morpheme (''-a(k)'') subordinates ''siki'' "wool" to ''udu'' "sheep", and the second subordinates ''udu siki-a(k)'' "sheep of wool" (or "woolly sheep") to ''sipad'' "shepherd".


Pronouns

The attested personal pronouns are: For most of the suffixes, vowels are subject to loss if they are attached to vowel-final words.


Numerals

Sumerian has a combination
decimal The decimal numeral system (also called the base-ten positional numeral system and denary or decanary) is the standard system for denoting integer and non-integer numbers. It is the extension to non-integer numbers of the Hindu–Arabic numeral ...
and
sexagesimal Sexagesimal, also known as base 60 or sexagenary, is a numeral system with sixty as its base. It originated with the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, was passed down to the ancient Babylonians, and is still used—in a modified form ...
system (for example, 600 is 'ten sixties'), so that the Sumerian lexical numeral system is sexagesimal with 10 as a subbase. Numerals and composite numbers are as follows:


Verbal morphology


General

The Sumerian
finite verb Traditionally, a finite verb (from la, fīnītus, past participle of to put an end to, bound, limit) is the form "to which number and person appertain", in other words, those inflected for number and person. Verbs were originally said to be ''fin ...
distinguishes a number of moods and agrees (more or less consistently) with the subject and the object in person, number and gender. The verb chain may also incorporate pronominal references to the verb's other modifiers, which has also traditionally been described as "agreement", although, in fact, such a reference ''and'' the presence of an actual modifier in the clause need not co-occur: not only ''e2-še3 ib2-ši-du-un'' "I'm going to the house", but also ''e2-še3 i3-du-un'' "I'm going to the house" and simply ''ib2-ši-du-un'' "I'm going to it" are possible. The Sumerian verb also makes a binary distinction according to a category that some regard as tense (past vs present-future), others as
aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
(perfective vs imperfective), and that will be designated as TA (tense/aspect) in the following. The two members of the opposition entail different conjugation patterns and, at least for many verbs, different stems; they are theory-neutrally referred to with the
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
grammatical terms for the two respective forms – ''ḫamṭu'' (quick) and ''marû'' (slow, fat). Finally, opinions differ on whether the verb has a
passive Passive may refer to: * Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages, see also Pseudopassive * Passive language, a language from which an interpreter works * Passivity (behavior), the condition of submitting to the influence of on ...
or a
middle voice In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the ...
and how it is expressed. The verbal root is almost always a monosyllable and, together with various
affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
es, forms a so-called verbal chain which is described as a sequence of about 15 slots, though the precise models differ. The
finite verb Traditionally, a finite verb (from la, fīnītus, past participle of to put an end to, bound, limit) is the form "to which number and person appertain", in other words, those inflected for number and person. Verbs were originally said to be ''fin ...
has both
prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...
es and
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
es, while the
non-finite verb A nonfinite verb is a derivative form of a verb unlike finite verbs. Accordingly, nonfinite verb forms are inflected for neither number nor person, and they cannot perform action as the root of an independent clause. In English, nonfinite verbs inc ...
may only have suffixes. Broadly, the prefixes have been divided in three groups that occur in the following order: ''modal prefixes'', "''conjugation prefixes''", and ''pronominal and dimensional'' prefixes. The suffixes are a future or imperfective marker /-ed-/, pronominal suffixes, and an /-a/ ending that nominalizes the whole verb chain. The overall structure can be summarized as follows: Note also that more than one pairing of a pronominal prefix and a dimensional prefix may occur within the verb chain.


Modal prefixes

The modal prefixes are : * /Ø-/ (
indicative A realis mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Most ...
), * /nu-/ and /la-/, /li-/ ( negative; /la/ and /li/ are used before the conjugation prefixes ''ba-'' and ''bi2-''), * /ga-/ (
cohortative In linguistics, hortative modalities (; abbreviated ) are verbal expressions used by the speaker to encourage or discourage an action. Different hortatives can be used to express greater or lesser intensity, or the speaker's attitude, for or a ...
, "let me/us"), * /ḫa-/ or /ḫe-/ with further assimilation of the vowel in later periods ( precative or affirmative), * /u-/ ( prospective "after/when/if", also used as a mild imperative), * /na-/ (negative or affirmative), * /bara-/ (negative or vetitive), * /nuš-/ (unrealizable wish?) and * /ša-/ with further assimilation of the vowel in later periods (affirmative?). Their meaning can depend on the TA.


"Conjugation prefixes"

The meaning, structure, identity and even the number of "conjugation prefixes" have always been a subject of disagreements. The term "conjugation prefix" simply alludes to the fact that a
finite verb Traditionally, a finite verb (from la, fīnītus, past participle of to put an end to, bound, limit) is the form "to which number and person appertain", in other words, those inflected for number and person. Verbs were originally said to be ''fin ...
in the
indicative mood A realis mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mos ...
must always contain one of them. Some of their most frequent expressions in writing are ''mu-, i3-'' ( ED
Lagaš Lagash (cuneiform: LAGAŠKI; Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''Lagaš''), was an ancient city state located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and east of Uruk, about east of the modern town of Ash Shatrah, Iraq. Lagash ...
variant: ''e-''), ''ba-'', ''bi2-'' (ED Lagaš: ''bi- or be2''), ''im-'', ''im-ma-'' (ED Lagaš ''e-ma-''), ''im-mi-'' (ED Lagaš ''i3-mi'' or ''e-me-''), ''mi-'' (always followed by pronominal-dimensional ''-ni-'') and ''al-'', and to a lesser extent ''a-'', ''am3-'', ''am3-ma-'', and ''am3-mi-''; virtually all analyses attempt to describe many of the above as combinations or allomorphs of each other. The starting point of most analyses are the obvious facts that the 1st person dative always requires ''mu-'', and that the verb in a "passive" clause without an overt
agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...
tends to have ''ba-''. Proposed explanations usually revolve around the subtleties of spatial grammar, information structure (
focus Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to: Arts * Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film *''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore * ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...
),
verb valency In linguistics, valency or valence is the number and type of arguments controlled by a predicate, content verbs being typical predicates. Valency is related, though not identical, to subcategorization and transitivity, which count only object ar ...
, and, most recently,
voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in ...
. ''Mu-'', ''im-'' and ''am3-'' have been described as
ventive In linguistics, andative and venitive (abbreviated and ) are a type of verbal deixis: verb forms which indicate 'going' or 'coming' motion, respectively, in reference to a particular location or person. Other terms sometimes seen are itive and ve ...
morphemes, while ''ba-'' and ''bi2-'' are sometimes analyzed as actually belonging to the pronominal-dimensional group (inanimate pronominal /-b-/ + dative /-a-/ or directive /-i-/).E.g. Zólyomi 1993 ''Im-ma-'', ''im-mi-'', ''am3-ma-'' and ''am3-mi-'' are then considered by some as a combination of the ventive and /ba-/, /bi-/ or otherwise a variety of the ventive.Rubio 2007 The element ''i3-'' has been argued to be a mere
prothetic In linguistics, prothesis (; from post-classical Latin based on grc, πρόθεσις ' 'placing before'), or less commonly prosthesis (from Ancient Greek ' 'addition') is the addition of a sound or syllable at the beginning of a word without ch ...
vowel, ''al-'' a
stative According to some linguistics theories, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are ...
prefix, ''ba-'' a
middle voice In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the ...
prefix, etcetera.


Pronominal and dimensional prefixes

The dimensional prefixes of the verb chain basically correspond to, and often repeat, the case markers of the noun phrase. Like the latter, they are attached to a "head" – a pronominal prefix. The other place where a pronominal prefix can be placed is immediately before the stem, where it can have a different allomorph and expresses the absolutive or the ergative participant (the transitive subject, the intransitive subject or the direct object), depending on the TA and other factors, as explained below. However, this neat system is obscured by the tendency to drop or merge many of the prefixes in writing and possibly in pronunciation as well. The generally recognized dimensional prefixes are shown in the table below; if several occur within the same verb complex, they are placed in the order they are listed in. The pronominal prefixes are: The morphemes /-n-/ and /-b-/ are clearly the prefixes for the 3rd person singular animate and inanimate respectively; the 2nd person singular appears as ''-e-'' in most contexts, but as /-r-/ before the dative (-ra-), leading someZólyomi 2005 to assume a phonetic /-ir-/ or /-jr-/. The 1st person may appear as ''-e-'', too, but is more commonly not expressed at all (the same may frequently apply to 3rd and 2nd persons); it is, however, cued by the choice of ''mu-'' as conjugation prefix (/mu-/ + /-a-/ → ''ma-''). The 1st, 2nd and 3rd plural infixes are ''-me-'', ''-re''?''-'' and ''-ne-'' in the dative and perhaps in other contexts as well, though not in the pre-stem position (see below). An additional exception from the system is the prefix ''-ni-'' which corresponds to a noun phrase in the locative – in which case it doesn't seem to be preceded by a pronominal prefix – and, according to Gábor Zólyomi and others, to an animate one in the directive – in the latter case it is analyzed as pronominal /-n-/ + directive /-i-/. Zólyomi and others also believe that special meanings can be expressed by combinations of non-identical noun case and verb prefix. Also according to some researchers /-ni-/ and /bi-/ acquire the forms /-n-/ and /-b-/ (coinciding with the ''absolutive–ergative'' pronominal prefixes) before the stem if there isn't already an absolutive–ergative pronominal prefix in pre-stem position: ''mu-un-kur9'' = /mu-ni-kur/ "he went in there" (as opposed to ''mu-ni-kur9'' = ''mu-ni-in-kur9'' = /mu-ni-n-kur/ "he brought in – caused omething or someoneto go in – there".


Pronominal suffixes and conjugation

The pronominal suffixes are as follows: The initial vowel in all of the above suffixes can be assimilated to the root. The general principle for pronominal agreement in conjugation is that in ''ḫamṭu'' TA, the transitive subject is expressed by the prefix, and the direct object by the suffix, and in the ''marû'' TA it is the other way round; as for the intransitive subject, it is expressed, in both TAs, by the suffixes and is thus treated like the object in ''ḫamṭu'' and like the subject in ''marû'' (except that its third person is expressed, not only in ''ḫamṭu'' but also in ''marû'', by the suffixes used for the ''object'' in the ''ḫamṭu'' TA). A major exception from this generalization are the plural forms – in them, not only the prefix (as in the singular), but also the suffix expresses the transitive subject. Additionally, the prefixes of the plural are identical to those of the singular – /-?-/ or /-e-/, /-e-/, /-n-/, /-b-/ – as opposed to the ''-me-'', ''-re-?'', ''-ne-'' that are presumed for non-pre-stem position – and some scholars believe that the prefixes of the 1st and second person are /-en-/ rather than /-e-/ when they stand for the object. Before the pronominal suffixes, a suffix /-e(d)-/ with a
future The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ...
or related modal meaning can be inserted, accounting for occurrences of ''-e'' in the third-person singular ''marû'' of intransitive forms; because of its meaning, it can also be said to signal ''marû'' in these forms. The use of the personal affixes in conjugation can be summarised as follows: Examples for TA and pronominal agreement: (''ḫamṭu'' is rendered with past tense, ''marû'' with present): /i-gub-en/ ("I stood" or "I stand"), /i-n-gub-en/ ("he placed me" or "I place him"); /i-sug-enden/ ("we stood/stand"); /i-n-dim-enden/ ("he created us" or "we create him"); /mu-e?-dim-enden/ ("we created omeone or something); i3-gub-be2 = /i-gub-ed/ ("he will/must stand"); ib2-gub-be2 = /i-b-gub-e/ ("he places it"); /i-b-dim-ene/ ("they create it"), /i-n-dim-eš/ ("they created omeone or something or "he created them"), /i-sug-eš/ ("they stood" or "they stand"). Confusingly, the subject and object prefixes (/-n-/, /-b-/, /-e-/) are not commonly spelled out in early texts, although the "full" spellings do become more usual during the
Third Dynasty of Ur The Third Dynasty of Ur, also called the Neo-Sumerian Empire, refers to a 22nd to 21st century Common Era, BC (middle chronology) Sumerian ruling dynasty based in the city of Ur and a short-lived territorial-political state which some historians c ...
(in the Neo-Sumerian period) and especially during the Late Sumerian period. Thus, in earlier texts, one finds ''mu-ak'' and ''i3-ak'' (''e-ak'' in early dynastic Lagash) instead of ''mu-un-ak'' and ''in-ak'' for /mu-n-ak/ and /i-n-ak/ "he/she made", and also ''mu-ak'' instead of ''mu-e-ak'' "you made". Similarly, pre-Ur III texts also spell the first- and second-person suffix /-en/ as ''-e'', making it coincide with the third person in the ''marû'' form.


Stem

The verbal stem itself can also express grammatical distinctions. The plurality of the absolutive participant can be expressed by complete reduplication of the stem or by a
suppletive In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even ...
stem. Reduplication can also express "plurality of the action itself", intensity or iterativity. With respect to TA marking, verbs are divided in four types; ''ḫamṭu'' is always the unmarked TA. * The stems of the 1st type, regular verbs, do not express TA at all according to most scholars, or, according to M. Yoshikawa and others, express ''marû'' TA by adding an (assimilating) /-e-/ as in ''gub-be2'' or ''gub-bu'' vs ''gub'' (which is, however, nowhere distinguishable from the first vowel of the pronominal suffixes except for intransitive ''marû'' 3rd person singular). * The 2nd type express ''marû'' by partial reduplication of the stem, e.g. ''kur9'' vs ''ku4-ku4.'' * The 3rd type express ''marû'' by adding a consonant, e.g. ''te'' vs ''teg̃3.'' * The 4th type use a suppletive stem, e.g. ''dug4'' vs ''e''. Thus, as many as four different suppletive stems can exist, as in the admittedly extreme case of the verb "to go": ''g̃en'' ("to go", ''ḫamṭu'' sing.), ''du'' (''marû'' sing.), (''e-'')''re7'' (''ḫamṭu'' plur.), ''sub2'' (''marû'' plur.)


Other issues

The nominalizing suffix /-a/ converts non-finite and finite verbs into participles and relative clauses: ''šum-ma'' "given", ''mu-na-an-šum-ma'' "which he gave to him", "who gave (something) to him", etc.. Adding /-a/ after the future/modal suffix /-ed/ produces a form with a meaning similar to the Latin gerundive: ''šum-mu-da'' = "which will/should be given". On the other hand, adding a (locative-terminative?) /-e/ after the /-ed/ yields a form with a meaning similar to the Latin ''ad'' + gerund (acc.) construction: ''šum-mu-de3'' = "(in order) to give". The
copula verb In linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae; abbreviated ) is a word or phrase that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement, such as the word ''is'' in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase ''was not being'' i ...
/me/ "to be" is mostly used as an enclitic: ''-men'', ''-men'', ''-am'', ''-menden'', ''-menzen'', ''-(a)meš''. The
imperative mood The imperative mood is a grammatical mood that forms a command or request. The imperative mood is used to demand or require that an action be performed. It is usually found only in the present tense, second person. To form the imperative mood, ...
construction is produced with a singular ''ḫamṭu'' stem, but using the ''marû'' agreement pattern, by turning all prefixes into suffixes: ''mu-na-an-sum'' "he gave (something) to him", ''mu-na-e-sum-mu-un-ze2-en'' "you (plur.) gave (something) to him" – ''sum-mu-na-ab'' "give it to him!", ''sum-mu-na-ab-ze2-en'' "give (plur.) it to him!" Compare the French ''vous le lui donnez'', but ''donnez-le-lui!''


Syntax

The basic word order is
subject–object–verb Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective con ...
; verb finality is only violated in rare instances, in poetry. The moving of a constituent towards the beginning of the phrase may be a way to highlight it,Zólyomi 1993 as may the addition of the copula to it. The so-called anticipatory genitive (''e2-a lugal-bi'' "the owner of the house/temple", lit. "of the house, its owner") is common and may signal the possessor's topicality. There are various ways to express
subordination Subordination may refer to *Subordination in a hierarchy (in military, society, etc.) ** Insubordination, disobedience *Subordination (linguistics) * Subordination (finance) * Subordination agreement, a legal document used to deprecate the claim ...
, some of which have already been hinted at; they include the nominalization of a verb, which can then be followed by case morphemes and possessive pronouns (''kur9-ra-ni'' "when he entered") and included in "prepositional" constructions (''eg̃er a-ma-ru ba-ur3-ra-ta'' "back – flood – conjugation prefix – sweep over – nominalizing suffix – enitive suffix?– ablative suffix" = "from the back of the Flood's sweeping-over" = "after the
Flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...
had swept over").
Subordinating conjunction In grammar, a conjunction (abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitutes a ...
s such as ''ud-da'' "when, if", ''tukum-bi'' "if" are also used, though the
coordinating conjunction In grammar, a conjunction (abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitutes a ...
''u3'' "and", a Semitic adoption, is rarely used. A specific problem of Sumerian syntax is posed by the numerous so-called
compound verb In linguistics, a compound verb or complex predicate is a multi-word compound that functions as a single verb. One component of the compound is a ''light verb'' or ''vector'', which carries any inflections, indicating tense, mood, or aspect, bu ...
s, which usually involve a noun immediately before the verb, forming a lexical or
idiom An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language, ...
atic unitJohnson 2004:22 (e.g. ''šu...ti'', lit. "hand-approach" = "receive"; ''igi...du8'', lit. "eye-open" = "see"). Some of them are claimed to have a special agreement pattern that they share with
causative In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...
constructions: their logical object, like the causee, receives, in the verb, the directive infix, but in the noun, the dative suffix if animate and the directive if inanimate.


Sample text


Inscription by Entemena of Lagaš

This text was inscribed on a small clay cone c. 2400 BC. It recounts the beginning of a war between the city-states of Lagaš and Umma during the Early Dynastic III period, one of the earliest border conflicts recorded. (RIME 1.09.05.01)


See also

*
List of extinct languages of Asia {{Language Endangerment status This is a list of extinct languages of Asia, languages which have undergone language death, have no native speakers, and no spoken descendant. There are 114 languages listed. 8 from Central Asia, 21 from East As ...
*
List of languages by first written accounts This is a list of languages arranged by age of the oldest existing writing, text recording a complete sentence in the language. It does not include undeciphered scripts, though there are various claims without wide acceptance, which, if substant ...
*
Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (PSD) is a project to compile a comprehensive dictionary of the Sumerian language. It is run out of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and funded by both private donors and ...
*
Sumerian literature Sumerian literature constitutes the earliest known corpus of recorded literature, including the religious writings and other traditional stories maintained by the Sumerian civilization and largely preserved by the later Akkadian and Babylonian em ...


References

;Notes ;Citations


Bibliography

* * * * * (grammar treatment for the advanced student) * * *Hayes, John (1990; 3rd revised ed. 2018), ''A Manual of Sumerian: Grammar and Texts''. UNDENA, Malibu CA. . (primer for the beginning student) *Hayes, John (1997), ''Sumerian''. Languages of the World/Materials #68, LincomEuropa, Munich. . (41 pp. précis of the grammar) *Jagersma, B. (2009), ''A Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian'', Universitet Leiden, The Netherlands. *Jestin, J. (1951), ''Abrégé de Grammaire Sumérienne'', Geuthner, Paris. . (118pp overview and sketch, in French) * * *Michalowski,Piotr, (2004), "Sumerian", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages'' pp 19–59, ed. Roger Woodward. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . *Pinches, Theophilus G., "Further Light upon the Sumerian Language.", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1914, pp. 436–40 * * *Rubio, Gonzalo (2007), "Sumerian Morphology". In ''Morphologies of Asia and Africa'', vol. 2, pp. 1327–1379. Edited by Alan S. Kaye. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, IN, . * (Well-organized with over 800 translated text excerpts.) * (collection of Sumerian texts, some transcribed, none translated) *Zólyomi, Gábor. 2017. ''An Introduction to the Grammar of Sumerian.'' Open Access textbook, Budapest.


Further reading

* *Ebeling, J., & Cunningham, G. (2007). ''Analysing literary Sumerian : corpus-based approaches''. London: Equinox. *Halloran, J. A. (2007). ''Sumerian lexicon: a dictionary guide to the ancient Sumerian language''. Los Angeles, Calif: Logogram. *
Shin Shifra Shin Shifra ( he, ש. שפרה); is the pen name of Shifra Shifman Shmuelevitch (1931 – 9 February 2012), a poet, translator, writer, editor and literary academic. Shifra won multiple literature awards. Biography Shin Shifra, the fifth of ...
, Jacob Klein (1996). ''In Those Far Days''. Tel Aviv,
Am Oved Am Oved ("A Working People") is an Israeli publishing house. History Am Oved was founded in 1942 by Berl Katznelson, who was its first Editor in Chief. It was created as an organ of the Histadrut, Israel's federation of Labor, with a goal of publi ...
and The Israeli Center for Libraries' project for translating Exemplary Literature to Hebrew. This is an anthology of Sumerian and Akkadian poetry, translated into Hebrew.


External links

*''General''
Akkadian Unicode Font
(to see Cuneiform text
Archive
*''Linguistic overviews''
''A Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian'' by Abraham Hendrik Jagersma
(preliminary version)
Sumerisch (An overview of Sumerian by Ernst Kausen, in German)
!--Based on Gabor Zolyomi's description AND rather detailed, → sufficiently different from Rubio, Foxvog AND the ETCSL overview to be useful, IMO.-->
Chapter VI of ''Magie chez les Chaldéens et les origines accadiennes''
(1874) by
François Lenormant François Lenormant (17 January 1837 – 9 December 1883) was a 19th-century French Hellenist, Assyriologist and archaeologist. Biography Early life Lenormant's father, Charles Lenormant, distinguished as an archaeologist, numismatist and Egypt ...
: the state of the art in the dawn of Sumerology, by the author of the first eve

grammar of "Akkadian" *''Dictionaries''
Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (EPSD)

Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (EPSD) 2

Elementary Sumerian Glossary by Daniel A. Foxvog (after M. Civil 1967)



Sumerian Lexicon – Electronic Search
*''Corpora''
The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL)
Includes translations.
CDLI: Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
a large corpus of Sumerian texts in transliteration, largely from the Early Dynastic and Ur III periods, accessible with images. *''Research''
Online publications arising from the ETCSL project
( Portable Document Format, PDF)
Structural Interference from Akkadian in Old Babylonian Sumerian by Gábor Zólyomi
( Portable Document Format, PDF)
Other online publications by Gábor Zólyomi
( Portable Document Format, PDF)
The Life and Death of the Sumerian Language in Comparative Perspective
by Piotr Michalowski

( Portable Document Format, PDF) **Eléments de linguistique sumérienne (by Pascal Attinger, 1993; in French), at the digital librar
RERO DOCParts 1–4Part 5

The Origin of Ergativity in Sumerian, and the Inversion in Pronominal Agreement: A Historical Explanation Based on Neo-Aramaic parallels, by E. Coghill & G. Deutscher, 2002
at the
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sumerian Language Agglutinative languages Cuneiform Sumer Subject–object–verb languages Language isolates of Asia Languages attested from the 3rd millennium BC Languages extinct in the 2nd millennium BC Jemdet Nasr period