Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

(38) a. Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta 554 (see above, chapter 2, section 2.1)
en aratta ki .ke 4 gig.e igi bi 2.in.du 8
The Lord of Aratta saw the wheat, lit., there was a perception of wheat by
the Lord of Aratta,
b. Dumuzi and Geshtinana 53 (example [26c] above)
lu 2.u 3 e 2.nu ni 2.te.na zi.ni silim.ma a.ba.a igi mi.ni.in.du 8
As for the life of a man who is without a home, that it (= his life) is safe,
who is the one who has seen it?
Thus, just as (37a) and (37b) differed only in terms of the presence or absence of the
relative marker ßa and its consequences for topicalization of the head noun, the two
examples in (38) are differentiated by the presence in (38b) of a third person animate
possessive pronoun that was, presumably, affixed to the underlying infinitive root
(*√-bi 2 + -ni [+ -n]), became part of the verbal prefix (*√-bi 2-ni [+ -n]), and moved along
with it to preverbal position (*bi 2-ni-n-√ > *mini-n-√). The primary effect of the addition
of the third person animate possessive pronoun is that the verb that it is affixed to
becomes definite and can be topicalized. As such it parallels, in a number of respects, the
Lakhota example noted below.
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