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idea. In tli it is i ssible
to believe thai ab 'dwellin uffix ab,
tinct tones, In this connection, compare the di
Sumerian below, II, § 3, sub -mu. Of course, nothing 1
rd i" Sumerian tones. If
'
d at all, as they must have done if
Sumerian was ever spoken, they must have died oul at a very earlj dab as the
purely written ceremonial language oi the Semitic priests In
unding multiplicity of meaninj phonetic
the tone th not, of course, solve the problem entirely. In such instances, as the
meanings in the following word-list attributed to th ilu a •
A,
the most we can do
i- to collect the fundamental ideas belonging to the sign and word and assume that each
of these ideas was originally represented by a distinct tone. Even this, h
not certain. It is curious to note, however, that in every such example, the number
of conjectural fundamental tones never exceeds the possible number eight, the physical
tone limit.
II: The Sumerian Pronominal and Verbal Systems.
One of the chief points made by the Antisumerists has always been the indefinite
character of the Sumerian grammatical system as seen in the conjugation of the verb. 1
Owing to this fact, the charge has actually been made that it would be impossible to read
a non-Semitic text intelligently without the aid of an Assyrian translation. Such an idea
degrades the language to the position of a mere imperfect system of mnemonic suggestion,
depending on the reader's memory of the original Assyrian text; in short to something
little better than the tally-sticks of the North American Cree Indians, the wampum strings
of the Passamaquoddies of Maine, or the q/rpus-cords of the Ouichua Indians of Peru and
Ecuador (see my article The Passamaquoddy Wampum Records in Proc. Amer, Philos.
Soc. XXXV], 480). It will, I think, be evident from the data given in the preceding chapter
that there must have been an agglutinative linguistic basis for the Sumerian system even
in its latest form and this view is not contradicted by a study of the Sumerian method of
conjugation which it is the object of this chapter to explain so far as possible.
§ I. — The Sumerian pronominal elements may be divided into two classt
those which are determinative with respect to person, and those which are not. The funda-
mental principle of the differentiation of the first and second persons seems to be the occurrence in
the text of some determinative word or construction. Thus we may find: (1) a determinative
pronoun of the first or second persons; (2) a vocative; (3) a context which leaves no room
for doubt as to the person intended by the writer If none of these determining factors
are present, it is understood that the verb is in the third person. The vast majority of
verbal prefixes are indeterm'-nate as to their personal force see below SS '3 sqq)- Whenever
we find a construction in the first or second persons, which has apparently no determinative
word to indicate the person, this occurs in every case which 1 have examined, in a mutilated
text, where it may reasonably be supposed that the determinative element has been broken off.
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