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Sumerian languageSumerian (π ΄π EME.GIR15 "native tongue") was the language of ancient Sumer, spoken in Southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BCE. It was gradually replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BCE (the exact dating being a matter of debate), but continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the first century CE. Then, it was forgotten until the 19th century, when Assyriologists began deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions and excavated tablets left by these speakers. Sumerian is a language isolate. VarietiesStagesThe history of written Sumerian can be divided into several periods.
Some versions of the chronology may omit the Late Sumerian phase and regard all texts written after 2000 BCE as Post-Sumerian. The term "Post-Sumerian" is meant to refer to the time when the language was already extinct and only preserved by Babylonians and Assyrians as a liturgical and classical language (for religious, artistic and scholarly purposes). The extinction has been traditionally and dated approximately to the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the last predominantly Sumerian state in Mesopotamia, about 2000 BCE. However, this date is very approximate, as many scholars have contended that Sumerian was already dead or dying as early as around 2100, by the beginning of the Ur III period, while others believe that Sumerian persisted as a spoken language in a small part of Southern Mesopotamia (Nippur and its surroundings) until as late as 1700 BCE. Whatever the status of spoken Sumerian between 2000 and 1700, it is from this period that a particularly large amount of literary texts and bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian lexical lists survive, especially from the scribal school of Nippur. This, along with the particularly intensive official and literary use of the language in Akkadian-speaking states during the same time, is the basis for the distinction between a Late Sumerian period and all subsequent time. DialectsTwo varieties (lects, dialects, sociolects) of Sumerian are recorded. The standard variety is called eme-Δir (Δ pronounced [Ε]). The other recorded variety is called eme-sal (π ΄π© EME.SAL "fine tongue") . The name is usually translated as "women's language". Eme-sal is used exclusively by female characters in some literary texts (this may be compared to the female languages or language varieties that exist or have existed in some cultures, e.g. among the Chukchis and the Caribs, and to women's use of Prakrit as opposed to men's use of Sanskrit in the Indian classics); in addition, it is dominant in certain genres of cult songs etc.. The special features of eme-sal are mostly phonological (e.g. m is often used instead of Δ as in me vs standard Δe26, "I"), but words different from the standard language are also used (e.g. ga-Ε‘a-an vs standard nin, "lady"). Sumerian words adapted into Akkadian were sometimes of the eme-sal variety, so that it may have been the more colloquial variety. ClassificationSumerian 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 (a.k.a. marΓ»-conjugation), but as ergative-absolutive in most other forms of the indicative mood. Similar patterns are found in a large number of unrelated split ergative languages (see more examples at split ergativity). In Sumerian the ergative case is marked by the suffix -e and the absolutive case (as in most ergative languages) by no suffix at all (the so-called "zero suffix"). Example of the ergative pattern: lugal-e e2 mu-un-du3 "the king built the house"; lugal ba-gen "the king went" (the transitive subject is expressed differently from the intransitive subject, as it takes the suffix -e). Example of the nominative-accusative pattern: i3-du-un (< *i3-du-en) = I shall go; e2 ib2-du3-un (< *ib2-du3-en) = I shall build the house (the transitive subject is expressed in the same way as the intransitive subject, as both verbs takes the same 1st person singular suffix -en). Sumerian distinguishes the grammatical genders animate/inanimate (personal/impersonal), but it does not have separate male/female gender pronouns. Sumerian has also been claimed to have two tenses (past and present-future), but these are currently described as completive and incompletive aspects instead. There are a large number of cases - nominative, ergative, genitive, dative, locative, comitative, equative ("as, like"), terminative ("to"), ablative ("from"), etc (the exact list varies somewhat in different grammars). Another characteristic feature of Sumerian is the large number of homophones (words with the same sound structure but different meanings), which are perhaps pseudo-homophones, as there might have been differences in pronunciation (such as tone) that are unknown. The different homophones (or, more precisely, the different cuneiform signs that denote them) are marked with different numbers by convention, "2" and "3" being replaced by acute accent and grave accent diacritics respectively. For example: du = "go", du3 = dΓΉ = "build". Sumerian has been the subject of controversial proposals purportedly identifying it as related genetically with almost every known agglutinative language. As the most ancient written language, it has a peculiar prestige, and such proposals sometimes have a nationalistic background and generally enjoy little popularity among linguists because of their inverifiability. Many of the proposed associations belong to the realm of pseudoscientific language comparison rather than scientific comparative linguistics. Examples of suggested related languages include:
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