Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

Note that I differ from Zólyomi in taking the entire anticipatory genitive in (67) as the
topic—Zólyomi only includes e 2.a in the topic and sees the -bi of œiß.˙ur.bi as a
resumptive pronoun. In examples (65), (66) and (67), the possessive pronoun demarcates
a topic to the left from the rest of the sentence to the right: in (65), er 2 im.me constitutes
a distinct clause and does not violate the generalization. It could be argued that in (65)
and (67) the possessive pronoun is demonstrative in some fashion, but this is clearly not
the case in example (66). Note that—in principle at least—every noun in the
absolutive/nominative (zero-marked) case has available to it one of two possible
“possessive” constructions: where the possessor is a lexical noun phrase (as opposed to a
pronominal), the anticipatory genitive is regularly available for coding topicality through
a possessive pronoun-final construction, whereas in the absence of a lexical noun phrase,
the possessor can be coded more-or-less vacuously (since the possessive relation is
presupposed and the addressee is presumably already aware of the possessive relation
anyways) through the use of the ordinary possessive pronoun.
Although I do not attempt to establish the truth of such a possessive pronoun theory
of topic-marking any further herein, I think it does suggest the plausibility of associating
possessive constructions in Sumerian with definiteness. This is also in conformity with
typological expectations in that in languages in which determiners (a somewhat general
category subsuming demonstratives) and possessives occupy the same structural position
as in Sumerian, the occurrence of a noun within a possessive construction generally
indicates that the noun is definite (similar languages include English and Irish, known as
“determiner-genitive” languages in opposition to “adjectival-genitive” languages such as
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