SumerianGrammar

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SUMMARY—AND WHAT IS STILL MISSING
The present grammar, in its essential aspects, is traditionally descriptive.
It is not under the obligation of a more recent method—generative,
structural, or transformational. It is far from perfect as, e.g.,
in contrast to A. Falkenstein’s monumental “Gudea” grammar (1949,
1950), it lacks a section—or chapters—on syntax, the stepchild of
more recent grammars. However, quite a few features that would
traditionally figure in a “syntax” (the description of how parts of
speech as well as phrases are “set together”, but also of the way by
which parts of speech and phrases are morphologically marked for
their functions), have been included in the above chapters: e.g., functions
and morpho-syntactical behaviour of the case particles (5.4),
the system of the modal and connecting indicators (12.11, 12.12),
the vast complex of the non-finite verbal forms (12.14), or the nominalisation
of finite verbal forms (12.16).
On the other hand, the author may much too often have left the
impression of Sumerian as one uniform block instead of a living
being with a marked diachronic evolution. At any rate, a historical
grammar of Sumerian still has to be written.
Thirdly, the author has endeavoured, as often as possible, not to
describe Sumerian as a completely isolated body, but in connection
with Akkadian, the language of those inhabitants of Mesopotamia
who were the immediate neighbours of the Sumerians for a whole
millennium or even longer.
The author will not enumerate here topics that would have merited
inclusion in a grammar of Sumerian, such as, e.g., word formation
and nominal compounds, morphological variation (both
nominal and verbal) in different manuscripts of a given line of a literary
composition, or literary style in general. There is no end of
addenda—and corrigenda.
Finally, according to the witty remark of the late I. M. Diakonoff
that there are as many kinds of Sumerian as there are authors of
Sumerian grammars, I freely admit the highly subjective character
of my own effort.