Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

In recent years the investigation of their syntax has become one of the most interesting
areas of Sumerian grammatical research, primarily due to the postulation of a distinct
case-marking pattern in which a directive case agreement morpheme [Dir] appears in the
verbal prefix and is thought to agree with either a dative or a locative case-marking
postposition following the corresponding noun phrase. The noun phrase that bears the
dative or locative case in these constructions is often now described as the oblique object
[OO] of the verb.
In (1), under the OO hypothesis, igi is the syntactic object of the verb √du 8 and is in
the zero-marked absolutive case, but since it is a compound verb, the logical object is
coded in an oblique case such as the locative-terminative case, *-e [LocTerm], that
follows gig “wheat” in the phrase gig-e.
(2) Enki’s Journey to Nippur [1.1.4], l. 93 (Al-Fouadi 1969; Karahashi 2000: 29)
d en.ki.ke4 gu 4 im.ma.ab.gaz.e
enkik-e gud-Ø [i] 2-[b] 5-[a] 7-[b] 11-√gaz-e
PN-Erg ox-Abs Vent-NH-Dat-ProNH-√kill-Dur
Enki was slaughtering oxen
In (2), however, as one might expect in an ergative language, the agent appears in the
ergative case, d en.ki.ke 4, while the patient appears in the absolutive case, gu 4. The
morphosyntactic pattern in (1) is thought to be limited to transitive verbs of low
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