SumerianGrammar

THE SUMERIAN LANGUAGE
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guages A and B that sound alike today are more likely to be unrelated
than related because they are the product of phonetic evolution
over several millennia—not to mention the possible diachronical
change of meaning. While according to Deeters, if contemporaneous
language X were really a descendant from a language Y, related
to *Proto-Sumerian more than five or six millennia ago, the sound
structure and vocabulary of that hypothetical language Y are liable
to have become altered beyond recognition.
The only essay going beyond the comparison of Sumerian and
another language by way of vocabulary is G. Steiner’s “Sumerisch
und Elamisch: Typologische Parallelen”, ASJ 12 (1990) 143–76.
Steiner stresses structural similarities in the case system, pronominal
system, verb (“intransitiv-passivische Verbalauffassung”), word order
(S – O – V), nominalization of the verbal complex, and in his summary
he arrives at the cautious statement that “diese beiden Sprachen
trotz ihrer sehr unterschiedlichen morphologischen Struktur zu einer
‘Sprachgruppe’ zusammengefaßt werden können”. An essential difference
between Sumerian and Elamite is, however, the fact that the
Sumerian verb base is, as a rule, embedded in a string of prefixes
and suffixes whereas Elamite almost exclusively uses only suffixes.
In any case, even if Sumerian and Elamite were really (remote)
relatives, the general problem of the linguistic affinity of Sumerian
would remain unresolved.
1.3. THE LINGUISTIC ENVIRONMENT OF SUMERIAN
From since at least the end of the fourth millennium, Sumerians
were neighbours of the Elamites in Elam and of Semites, both sedentary
and nomadic, in Mesopotamia proper. Any attempt at extending
this picture must rest on speculation for lack of solid proof. The
earliest evidence for the Elamite language stems from clay tablets
with “Proto-Elamite” script whose find spots extend as far as Tepe
Ya˙yà, ca 900 km ESE of Susa (corresponding to the distance between
Uruk and Damascus as the crow flies). Although the “Proto-Elamite”
script has not yet been convincingly deciphered, it seems plausible
to assume that it was a predecessor of the Elamite linear script of
the Akkade period which has been shown to represent the Elamite
language.