Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

105. e 2 nam.ti.la e 2 d en.lil 2.la 2.ße 3
106. e 2.me.eß en.te.en.bi.da maß 2
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For the E’namtila, the house of Enlil,
Summer and Winter set about organizing the
kadra si ba.ni.in.sa 2.sa 2.eß animals and offerings,
Here—I would argue—we see a distinct use of the *mini-√ construction that is probably
not topicalizing, since there is no subsequent clause for which the *mini-√ clause can act
as an argument. Lines 105 and 106 involve en.te.en, “Winter,” but only as accompanied
by e 2.me.eß, “Summer,” so it is unlikely that the clause in line 104 acts as the subject of a
plural verb in line 106, namely si ba.ni.in.sa 2.sa 2.eß. The reduplication of the verbal root,
as suggested in the previous chapter, may serve as an indication that line 104 as a whole
functions in an adjectival/adverbial capacity with respect to another clause, hence my use
of the translation “since . . .” in line 104. Although the precise function of the *mini-√
prefix in line 104 and other cases like it remains unclear, in the following I classify such
examples as “identificational” (like the example in [25] above) on the assumption that the
primary function of such clauses is to introduce a property of topical noun such as
en.te.en in line 104 without directly linking the descriptive clause itself to any nearby
clause (as seems regularly the case with the topicalizing use of the *mini-√ prefix). In
more formal or diagnostic terms, the characteristic feature of identificational *mini-√
predicates is that the line in which it occurs begins with a coreferential noun in the
ergative case and that it cannot act as an argument of the following clause (in [25], the
coreferential noun was implicit in the initial verb, im.ma.ab.dab 5).