SUMERIAN

The ablative and the terminative case
ud ma-ri₂-tum mu-ni-kur₉-re-ša
ud maritum=ø S4 mu- S10 ni- S11 n- S12 kur- S14eš-S15ʾa-ʾa
day instrument=ABS VEN-L1-3.SG.H.A-enter-3.PL-SUB-L1
“Each person 2 silver rings of eight shekels of silver each: Šulgi-nuri, female
singer, and Balala, son of Agalum: when they brought in the maritum-instrument.”
13.2 The terminative case (slot 9)
The nominal case-marker of the terminative is /še/ written the sign ŠE₃. The
verbal prefix is /ši/, written with the sign ŠI.
Around the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE the vowel of the terminative
prefix /ši/ assimilated to the vowel of the following syllable in respect of
vowel height (the so-called ‘vowel harmony’ of the literature). The “high”
form was written with the grapheme ŠI, transliterated as ši-; while the “low” form
was written with grapheme ŠE₃, transliterated as še₃-, see, e.g., ex. (356) below.
When the nominal case-marker is preceded by an open syllable, then the
enclitic =/še/ may be reduced to /š/, in which case the terminative case-marker
is often not present graphemically, especially in the 3rd millennium BCE, see,
e.g., ex. (358) below.
The co-occurrence of the noun phrase with a terminative case-marker and
the terminative prefix is rather loose: adverbially used verbal participants in
the terminative often occur without any corresponding prefix in the verbal
prefix-chain, see, e.g., exx. (348) and (375) below.
The terminative may be used with both human and non-human verbal
participants. In the verbal prefix-chain the participant in the terminative may
be cross-referenced either by a composite or by a simple adverbial prefix, for
the latter see, e.g., ex. (356) below. The simple prefix always cross-references
a 3rd ps. sg. non-human participant.
The 1st ps. sg. pronominal prefix is the IPP /ʾ/ in S6, see, e.g., ex. (373)
below. The 2nd ps. sg. pronominal prefix is the IPP /e/ in S6, see, e.g., ex. (372)
below.
The 3rd ps. sg. human pronominal is expressed with the prefix /n/ in S6.
The 3rd ps. sg. non-human pronominal prefix is expressed with the prefix /b/
in S5 of the verbal template. When S5 is occupied by the middle prefix /ba/-,
then the pronominal prefix /b/ may not be used and the terminative prefix
occurs in its simple form without a pronominal prefix, see, e.g., ex. (377) below.
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