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