Post by Kior Olfaa on Dec 8, 2011 11:01:48 GMT -5
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) since at least the 4th millennium BC. Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC, but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the 1st century AD. It was forgotten until the 19th century, when Assyriologists began deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions and excavated tablets left by the Sumerians. It is the most ancient written language.
Sumerian is a language isolate. It is an agglutinative language, meaning that words could consist of a chain of more or less clearly distinguishable and separable affixes and/or morphemes. Sumerian is a split ergative language. It behaves as a nominative–accusative language in the 1st and 2nd person of present-future tense/incompletive aspect, but as ergative–absolutive in most other forms of the indicative mood.
The basic word order is subject–object–verb; verb finality is only violated in rare instances, in poetry. The moving of constituent towards the beginning of the phrase may be a way to highlight it,as may the addition of the copula to it.
There are numerous so-called compound verbs, which usually involve a noun immediately before the verb, forming a lexical or idiomatic unit (e.g. šu...ti, lit. "hand-approach" = "receive"; igi...du8, lit. "eye-open" = "see").
Links to more stuff on Sumerian:
www.sumerian.org/
www.ancientscripts.com/sumerian.html
Sumerian is a language isolate. It is an agglutinative language, meaning that words could consist of a chain of more or less clearly distinguishable and separable affixes and/or morphemes. Sumerian is a split ergative language. It behaves as a nominative–accusative language in the 1st and 2nd person of present-future tense/incompletive aspect, but as ergative–absolutive in most other forms of the indicative mood.
The basic word order is subject–object–verb; verb finality is only violated in rare instances, in poetry. The moving of constituent towards the beginning of the phrase may be a way to highlight it,as may the addition of the copula to it.
There are numerous so-called compound verbs, which usually involve a noun immediately before the verb, forming a lexical or idiomatic unit (e.g. šu...ti, lit. "hand-approach" = "receive"; igi...du8, lit. "eye-open" = "see").
Links to more stuff on Sumerian:
www.sumerian.org/
www.ancientscripts.com/sumerian.html