Sumerian Grammar[edit]In the lessons below, you'll be introduced
to aspects of Sumerian grammar in (hopefully) bite sized chunks. If
any of the lessons are confusing, don't hesitate to edit them for
style, or use the discussion boards for suggestions! That's the
spirit of the wiki, after all.The Lessons[edit]
Lesson One - The Plural Marker-- This lesson introduces us to
some simple nouns and how to mark them as plural.Lesson Two -
Possessives-- Here we learn how suffixed particles can modify the
meaning of a noun, like "house", to be possessive, like "my
house".Lesson Three - The Genitive-- The basics of the Sumerian
case system for nouns is outlined here.Lesson Four - The Copula--
Before introducing verbs in general, the copula is introduced,
along with simple predicative sentences.Lesson Five - The Verb
Chain-- The Sumerian verb is discussed in simple situations.Lesson
Six - A Sumerian Sentence-- Putting it all together, we translate a
complete Sumerian sentence.Lesson Seven - Ergativity in Sumerian--
A discussion of ergativity and how it is used in Sumerian.Lesson
Eight - The Case System-- Discussion of the cases used in
SumerianLesson Nine - Cuneiform-- Some introductory comments about
the system of writing used by the ancient Sumerians
Sumerian/Grammar/Lesson One - The Plural MarkerContents
1Singular Nouns 1.1Vocabulary 1.2Simple Noun Phrases 1.2.1Definite
vs Indefinite nouns 1.2.2Conjunction 1.2.3Quick Quiz 2The Plural
Marker 2.1ene 2.2Usingenewith noun phrases 2.3A little convention
3Quick Quiz 4History 5Linguistic BackgroundSingular Nouns[edit]I
think the easiest way to start Sumerian is by looking at some
familiar friends: nouns!Before embarking on a discussion
ofpluralityin Sumerian, first we need some good old
fashionsingularnouns to work with. Let's take the following
vocabulary as a small sampler. These are some really common words
in the tablets you might see in museums or books, so we might as
well start seeing them early!Vocabulary[edit]
Sumerian art lugal= king, master, lord ses= brother ama= mother
nin= sister; queen, lady dumu= child; son[A note on pronounciation:
remember,we don't really understandhow Sumerian was pronounced.
You're free to pronounce these words any way you like. In fact,
you'll see a lot of words in older Sumerian discussions don't look
anything like the words in this grammar, or other recent work.
We're still discovering a lot here, so there's plenty of room for
contribution.]Simple Noun Phrases[edit]Definite vs Indefinite
nouns[edit]The simplest noun phrase in Sumerian is just a plain old
noun, like the ones listed just above in the vocabulary. There are
no written markers fordefiniteness or indefinitenessin Sumerian,
however, which is a bit different from English. So, in Sumerian, if
you seelugal, it can meana king,the king, or even justking. While
you might think this is confusing and ambiguous, in practice there
is usually very little room for ambiguity. It's pretty easy from
context to figure out what the original author intended. In fact,
with a little experience, you won't even notice anything
missing!Conjunction[edit]Another way to make a noun phrase is to
just put two nouns directly next to each other; say, for
instance,the king and queen. This is even simpler in Sumerian. You
simply put the two words directly next to each other, with no other
markings! Sothe king and queenbecomes justlugal nin. There was
originally no word forandin Sumerian, and only much later in the
life of the language did scribes start using the wordu, which is
just a borrowed word from Akkadian. So we will omit theandin
Sumerian, and just write it the way the old Sumerians used
to.(You'll see a bunch of borrowings between Akkadian and Sumerian
-- the people of Mesopotamia started speaking Sumerian, then
Akkadian took over, and Sumerian was used only for formal occasions
or state purposes. Think Church Latin in the middle ages.)Quick
Quiz[edit]Just to test your vocabulary and knowledge of simple noun
phrases in Sumerian, I'll toss in some quizzes every now and then.
If you see a little dotted underline, that means there's hovertext
with the quiz answer. Good luck! Start by translating the following
from Sumerian to English:1. ama2. ses nin3. lugalAlso, even though
you will never encounter the need to translate from English to
Sumerian in actual practice (no one would understand you!), I will
also provide "generation" exercises, translating from English into
Sumerian. It's good practice. Try it on these simple phrases:1. the
brother2. a queen3. mother and childThe Plural Marker[edit]In
Sumerian, it is very common for a suffix or prefix to be attached
to a word. Sumerian does this to modify meaning, or relationships
to other words in a sentence. The same happens in English. Consider
the two wordskingandkings. We are all familiar with the plural
ending-sin English, and this little-sis called a "particle". A
particle is basically any part of a language that can't occur
alone, just by itself. You'd never see justsin an English sentence,
for instance.ene[edit]The same goes for Sumerian. In this case,
making things plural, we just use the suffix.ene. That funny dot
you see before theeneis just the way linguists like to write
things. If you see a dot like this, you know you're looking at a
particle. Plus, it neatly and logically separates the root word
from any suffixes for easy analysis. So, for instance,ses.enecould
be translatedbrothers, or perhapsthe brothers. (Remember your
vocabulary from the first section?)Usingenewith noun
phrases[edit]So it's easy to make a noun plural! But what about
plurals of more complex phrases, likemother and child? Well, in
English it would bemothers and children, where each element gets
pluralized. In Sumerian, however, we treat the two nouns as one
logical chunk, and pluralize thewhole thingonce. For instance:nin
ses = sister and brotherbecomes[nin ses].ene = sisters and
brothersSee our little friend.ene? There it is again, this time
attaching itself to a two-noun phrase, instead of just a simple
solo noun.A little convention[edit]Now, the phrase "nin sesene" can
mean two things: eithersister and brothersorsistersand brothers.
There is some room for ambiguity here.One more standard convention
linguists use, is to put heavy braces (the "[" and "]" above)
around sub-phrases, so you can see everything that is being
modified by some other particle. In this case, this convention can
help us disambiguate between the two possible meanings; here we see
the plural particle (.ene) modifying a two-noun phrase (nin ses).
So we first translate the noun phrase,= sister and brother, and
then modify the whole thing with the particle,= sisters and
brothers.It's actually pretty easy! And hopefully not too different
from English.Now, there are quite a few other ways to express
plurality in Sumerian, but for now, let's proceed with this common
particle and see what else we can learn.[Thomsen 69, Edzard 5.3.1]-
these bibliography references will occur throughout this text, and
refer to ML Thomsen's "The Sumerian Language" and D O Edzard's
"Sumerian Grammar", respectively.Quick Quiz[edit]Let's see if you
remember your nouns!1. nin.ene2. lugal.ene3. nin ses.ene4. [nin
ses].eneAnd just for fun, translate from English to Sumerian:1. the
king2. the king and queen3. the kings and queensHistory[edit](Every
now and then I'll put in a History section. My Sumerian history
isn't quite up to snuff, so if there are any Mesopotamian
historians out there, go nuts!)In case you're unfamiliar, Sumerian
is the language that was spoken and written in many parts of the
Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia,) which includes the land between the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is modern-day Iraq. Sumerian as
a spoken language probably died out long before the written
language became archaic. The reason: Ruling governments of this
region (Akkadians) continued to use the written language as alingua
francafor the region, and indeed it remained so for many centuries
after the Sumerian decline.The name "Sumer" was coined and used by
the Semitic Akkadians after the Sumerian civilization deteriorated.
The Sumerians referred to themselves as "sag'giga", or "the
black-headed people" and their area of inhabitance as "ki'en'gir",
or "Land of the speakers of Sumerian."Linguistic
Background[edit]When we talk about nouns in Sumerian, it's
important to note that several concepts in English are not present.
For instance, instead of dividing nouns into the familiar masculine
and feminine genders, Sumerian chooses to divide by "animate" and
"inanimate". (In fact, even these terms are a bit of a misnomer, as
animals are classed as "inanimate".)The important thing to remember
is that neither of these divisions have any real impact on the
meaning of a phrase. It is mostly useful for disambiguation or
grammatical redundancy.
Sumerian/Grammar/Lesson Two - Possessives