Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

for an extended discussion of the different pathways through which ergativity in
Sumerian might have arisen).
(102) Lugalbanda II [1.8.2.2], l. 55a
amar.e uzu suß 2 bi 2.in.gu 7
da
(*lugal.banda3 .ke4) [ ∃ amar.e uzu suß2] bi gu7 He (= Lugalbanda) had [ ∃ the young one (amar) eat salt-meat]
Here in (102), the verbal root, √gu 7, is no longer an argument of the verbal prefix *bi-√;
instead, the tables have turned. √gu 7 is the main verb and takes, in a rather informal
sense, only two arguments: the causer (Lugalbanda), typically in an ergative case, and a
complex made up of amar.e, uzu suß 2, and the *bi-√ prefix as the second absolutive
argument. In formal terms, the most important change is the movement of the *bi-√
prefix to preradical position from its originally postradical position. This undoubtedly
reflects the rearrangement of dependency relations between the *bi-√ prefix and the
lexical root. Since the head of the clause (the main or highest predicate, in other words) in
a strictly verb-final language is almost invariably the final morpheme, it is fairly
reasonable to argue that in the older, non-ergative structure in (101), the *bi-√ prefix
occurred at the end of the clause. We might, therefore, represent the argument structures
of the two diachronic phases as follows:
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