1 Low applicatives and the mapping hypothesis in Sumerian J. Cale ...

and, more importantly, both the raised possessor and the resumptive pronoun are absent. The
nominal component of the verbal complex, åu, still occurs in the locative case as the idiom
demands, but there is no resumptive pronoun.
[[The morphology of the verbal prefix]]
The morphosyntactic test that differentiates a dative functioning as a raised possessor from the
dative associated with an ordinary recipient is the form of the verbal prefix. If we compare the
verbal prefix in (4) to the prefix of an ordinary ditransitive verb like the one in (6), it should be
immediately apparent that the prefix in (6) is *-na-, the third person animate dative prefix.
Unlike the *-ni- prefix, there is widespread agreement that *-na- and the other members of its
paradigm code the dative case, prototypically representing recipients, addressees and
benefactees.
The *-ni- prefix, however, shows up in a variety of constructions, but crucially whenever
possessor raising seems to be present, we also find *-ni- or one of the other members of its
paradigm. This correlation is further stengthened by the morphological form of the *-ni-
paradigm itself as in (7). One of the standard ways of marking a noun as definite or topical in
Sumerian is through the use of redundant possessive pronouns, so it makes a certain amount of
sense that non-specificity and the predicational quality often associated with non-specific
nominal phrases would be indicated by forming a raised possessor construction and at the same
time—or perhaps as part of the same derivational or historical process—moving a possessive
pronoun that agrees in person and gender with the possessor into the verbal predicate itself in the
form of a prefix. The pronoun then functions as a clause-level possessive predicate that takes a
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