Basic principles with the Sumerian Grammar 6

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

11 August 2010

This is the 6th treatment of this topic. Sumerian is a dead language but had a living effect on society today. All the proliferations that we find in a structured society today were already present in the ancient Sumerian society. Dictionaries, contracts, yearly income balance sheets, trading in diversified goods, textiles, precious metals, all were already in place in those days. Sumerian texts are indicating that wild animals were brought to the Drehem market to be taken to the Nippur temple as sacrifices to the gods. Think of Classical Darwinianism for a moment: in 2048 BCE, wild animals [our ancestors according to the theory of evolution] were kidnapped and brought to be offered to gods at a temple. That is 4058 years ago. They obviously did not contemplate that man came from monkeys. And rightly so. Man was created by God, instantaneously, He spoke and it was. What you soon learn from Sumerian culture, is that the language is tapped into the metaphysical world since the sign for god regularly shows up. The societies were not socialistic as socialistic scholars are trying to squeeze out of texts. If there is a king [LUGAL] then the society is far from socialistic. And there were many lugals. A rulership with a socialistic program ad hoc here and there as the need demands, is a total different picture than a forced straight-jacket socialism mandatory with no exceptions and no time limits. So the study of Sumerian is well to consider.

Sumerian Verb system

When you talk about the Sumerian verbal system and the description thereof, you need to know that there are conflicting approaches in general linguistics whether languages should be seen as static or fluent, the first describing them with nominal aspects as the main focus and the fluent view, describing them with verbal or ergative jargon. The main philosophical question that serves as undercurrent in any famous linguist description is whether he/she views the basis of all linguistic description to turn around the noun as basis or the verb as basis. The issues are not new and can be found in over 200 years of linguistic descriptions. Daniel Foxvog views the basis of linguistic description of the Sumerian language as controlled by the ergative so that the subject is not something or someone coming into action and finish in a static position again (nominal approach) but is rather a "patient which experiences or undergoes a state, process or event versus an agent which causes that state [process] or event to happen" (Foxvog 2010: 61). He likes to see the two poles of discussion in Sumerian between ergative or absolutive whereas in English it is between nominative [subject] or accusatives [object].

Verbal rule:

Every Sumerian sentence or clause contains a subject (patient) but the agent is optional (Foxvog 2010: 61).

lú ba-úšThe man died[lú is subject]

é ba-dùThe house was built[é is object]

[Ø after the verb is the 3rd person singular verbal subject suffix] and ba is a prefix.

Patient and Agent sentence

lugal-e lú ba-an-úš

[lugal+e lú+Ø ba+n+úš+Ø] (úš is the verbal root for die)

noun+ergative case post-position -e noun+suffix prefix+3rd singular personal pronominal suffix -n+root+suffix

By the king the man died =

The king caused the man to die =

The king killed the man

No distinction between transitive and intransitive

There is no distinction transitive and intransitive in Sumerian (Foxvog 2010: 62). In English, to die would be intransitive and to build will by transitive but not so in Sumerian.

It is better to convert the transitive verbs in English [for the Sumerian] into a passive form at first so that when we see a root to build to consider it as to be built.

Patient as first participant and agent as second participant

Thomsen and Foxvog considers a subject in the verbal system or a patient and agent in a verbal system as participant one and participant two (Foxvog 2010: 62; also his Or 44 [1975] article).

ba-úšhe died

ba-an-úšhe killed him

Tense and Aspect

Again, when we touch upon this issue in the Sumerian grammar, we are dealing with the same ideology or axioms of the grammarian that he endorsed reading to much the literature of modern linguistics, especially those who were influenced by the Sanskrit grammarian Panini. Chomsky is one of them also and no lesser one. It is doubtful if we are able in a dead language to ascertain that they did not have any concepts of tenses (present, past, future) but only of aspect (complete, incomplete and on-going). It is more likely that they had a concept of both. Some genres will only feature tenses more than aspect while another genre will feature aspect more than tenses. But, this polarity is highly artificial and many Hebrew grammars suffer with the same descriptive jargon and misconceptions. It is misleading. Foxvog needs to be taken here with a bit of salt. With care. What is enlightening about Foxvog, is that he dichotomize the tense and aspect in his opening paragraph but when he actually defined it, he fused the two correctly by saying:

perfective verb: event took place in the past but it can also be an event which the speaker believes will definitely take place in future (Foxvog 2010: 62)

imperfective verb: event is taking place in the present or will be happening in the future (Foxvog 2010: 62)

Looking carefully at his definitions we must admit there is a tense and there is an aspect. This is the correct way to look at it. The focus of the speaker or the focus of the audience will determine what they will pull out of this hat.

Our question to Foxvog is this: is Sumerian tense orientated? Yes. Is Sumerian aspectival orientated? Yes. It depends what you want to say and how you say it.

Ferdinand de Saussare in the 1920's read too much of the Sanskrit grammar of Panini and then influenced trends of linguists in Functionalism, Structuralism and other trends to cut out the tense perspective from the linguistic phrases and syntax focus. If sounds are little divine sparks in us and pantheism prevails as is suggested then nothing can be past, present or future but it either happened and is completed; is happening or incomplete; or is ongoing. Foxvog is part of linguistic jargon of the 1960's and 1970's that confuse his description of tenses and aspects. It is not either or, it is both. There is a concept of what is past, present or future but so is there a concept of what is complete, incomplete or still ongoing.

When Foxvog described the syntax of the perfective and imperfective forms, he is totally at lost (Foxvog 2010: 63). Suddenly any of these forms can mean anything. When a perfective form occurs in narrative material or other genre's it is past tense. When it occurs in a direct speech statement by someone who is referring to actions in the future, then the sudden appearance of a perfective form only means that the person is considering in future the particular action as already done or past tense. That does not make it suddenly a form that should be translated with the future. It is virtually in the mind of the speaker seen as past tense in future. Fusion is not necessary as Foxvog is doing here (Foxvog 2010: 63).

Subject or Patient  paradigm for the perfective verbs

root + modifiers + suffix

I, me                             1                -(e)n

You                               2                -(e)n

he/him, she/her, it  3                -Ø

we, us                  1                -(e)nden

you                               2                -(e)nzen

they, them (personal)       3p               -(e)š

they, them (personal)       3i               reduplication = (plural or intensification) (Foxvog 2010: 63).

ba-du-un[ba+du+n]                                   I/you go away

ba-gub-bé-en[ba+gub+n]                          I/you stood

ba-tuš[ba+tuš+Ø]                            He/she/it sat down

ba-dù[ba+dù+Ø]                                       It was built

ba-tu-dè-en-dè-en [ba+tu(d)+nden]   We were born

ba-ku4-re-en-zé-en [ba+ku4(r)+nzen You (pl.) entered

ba-šub-bé-eš[ba+šub+š]                          They (people) were cast down

ba-dù-dù[ba+dù+dù]                                 They (things) were built

Agent  paradigm for the perfective verbs

ergative prefix + verbal prefix + root

I, by me                        1                -Ø

you, by you                   2                -e-

he/she, by him/her 3p               -n-

it, they, by it/them 3i               -b-

1

2

they, by them                 3p               -n-root-(e)š

We must remind ourselves that what we know of the Sumerian grammar is actually what we see in later Babylonian Theory of it (see J. Black, Sumerian Grammar in Babylonian Theory [1984]).

lú ba-zi                         The man rose        [ba+zig+Ø]

lú-ne ba-zi-be-eš          The men rose        [ba+zig+š]

lugal-e lú ba-an-zi         The king caused the man to       rise [ba+n+zig+Ø]

lugal-e lú-ne ba-an-zi-ge-eš    The king caused the men to rise [ba+n+zig+š]

lugal-e lú-ne ba-an-zi-ge-eš    The kings caused the man to rise [ba+n+zig+š]

Ambigious cases

Some sentences can be translated two ways:

ki-ni-šè bí-in-gur-ru-uš[b+n+gur+š]

a)   He (-n-) made them (-š) return to his place

b) They (-n-root-(e)š) made him return to his place

[Text: Puzur-Šulgi letter to Ibbi-Sin 40 Old Babylonian Period 2004-1980 BCE).

Source:

Daniel A. Foxvog, Introduction to Sumerian Grammar (Revised edition, June 2010). This work is a revised edition of his 1990 Sumerian Grammar (Foxvog 2010: 3). It is online at www.etana.org.