SumerianGrammar

48 CHAPTER SIX
semantic type (dimension, physical property, colour, human propensity,
age, value, speed, uncertain).
In view of the Sumero-Akkadian linguistic area (see 17) and the
bilingual lexical entries, we might, however, venture a rather pragmatic
approach: what did the scribes, in their Akkadian translations,
consider as adjectives (for in Akkadian, the adjective as a part of
speech is not contested) Their approach was probably very close to
ours.
The adjective occurs in simple form: mu-gibil “new year”, udughul
“evil demon”, kisal-mah “greatest (= main) court”.
It occurs in reduplication: na 4 -gal-gal “big stones”, me- d kal- d kal
“highly valued rites”.
Note: For reduplicated adjectives as a means to express the pl. of the preceding
substantive see 5.3.7.
A special feature is the reduplication of some adjectives denoting
colours: bar 6 -bar 6 “white”, from Ur III on spelled by single UD, but
pronounced babbar; sig 7 -sig 7 “green”.
An adjective occurs as a base + particle -a: á-zi-da “right (arm =)
side” (see Krecher 1978, above); ka“ ní∞g-du 10 -ga “(beer, good thing =)
beer of specially good quality”.
Note: ní∞g-du 10 -ga = *dummuqu “improved”; is there a correspondence with D-
stem (“quttulu”) adjectives of Akkadian ( J. N. Postgate)
There is a considerable number of compound nouns which Black
treats, according to their syntactical position, as extended adjectives;
we quote only three examples from Black’s catalogue: á-∞gál “(strength
available =) strong”, ní-tuku “(having awe =) reverent”; gal-zu “(knowing
great =) skilful”.
For the adjective as a base for adverbial expressions see ch. 11.