Cuneiform 102 · Chapter 01

The sentence in the clay

101 taught you how signs work. To read running Sumerian you need one more machine: how the sentence works. This chapter is the whole of Sumerian grammar in the coarsest useful outline — the shape of it, so that every later grammar bite has somewhere to land.¹

Three new signs — chosen by the grammar itself

The three habits of a Sumerian sentence

One: the verb comes last. Whatever else happens, the sentence saves its verb for the end — “the king a temple built.” Readers of Japanese, Turkish, or Latin poetry will feel at home; readers of English need one deep breath.

Two: words wear their grammar as tags. Sumerian is agglutinativebuilding words by stacking small pieces, each with exactly one job — like beads on a string: instead of changing a word’s insides, it strings small elements onto the outside — after nouns, around the verb. Each tag, with a sentence to hold it by:

• -ta “from”: 𒆳KUR · [kur] · mountain; foreign land𒋫TA · [ta] · [ta] kur-ta, “from the mountains” — where a caravan comes from, where the timber was brought from. Point of origin.
• -še₃ “to, toward, for”: 𒂍É · [e] · house, temple𒂠EŠ₂ · [še] · rope; the terminative -še₃ e₂-še₃, “to the house” — where the barley is delivered, where the procession is headed. Destination or purpose. (In chapter 05 you will see it end the most famous purpose-phrase in Sumerian: “for his life”.)
• -a “in, on, at”: 𒂍É · [e] · house, temple𒀀A · [a] · water e₂-a, “in the house” — where something sits or happens. The plainest tag of all, one bare vowel — 101’s very first sign in yet another job. The grammars call it the locativethe grammatical case meaning "in, on, at" — Sumerian marks it with -a; you will read it on real clay long before chapter 13 shelves it beside its siblings.
• possession, in two flavors. Sumerian splits “belonging” by who owns. A person’s things take -ani “his, her”: 𒂍É · [e] · house, temple𒀀A · [a] · water𒉌NI · [ni], i₃ · [ni]; oil, butter as i₃ e₂-a-ni, “his house” — say, the governor’s. A thing’s or place’s things take -bi “its”: 𒂍É · [e] · house, temple𒁉BI · [bi] · its/that; [bi] e₂-bi, “its house” — say, the city’s temple, the estate’s storehouse. Persons get -ani, everything else gets -bi; when you meet e₂-bi in a text, look back for the city or the temple that owns it.

Three: the doer can carry a mark. In sentences with a transitivea verb whose action lands on something — someone builds SOMETHING, eats SOMETHING; a verb that just happens (going, sitting) is intransitive verb, the noun doing the deed often ends in -e — 𒈗LUGAL · [lugal] · king𒂊E · [e] · [e]; as a word, levee/ditch lugal-e, “the king (acting)” — while the thing acted on wears no tag at all: in “the king built a temple,” the king takes -e and the temple stands bare. From here on you will spot that little tag in nearly every royal inscription this course reads. (Linguists call the full system “ergativethe case marking the doer of an action verb — Sumerian tags it with -e, treating doers and be-ers differently”; the label matters less than the habit of noticing the tag.)

Reading: a name in Sumerian order

Fara-period name lists again — this time a name that shows the ordering habit at work:

Three signs, all from 101 — but read them again with this chapter’s eyes: a noun, a noun, a modifier, assembled the Sumerian way, modifier last.

Drill before you go on

1. Write 𒂠EŠ₂ · [še] · rope; the terminative -še₃, 𒂊E · [e] · [e]; as a word, levee/ditch, 𒁉BI · [bi] · its/that; [bi] from memory; say še₃, e, bi.
2. Compose in transliterationthe sign-by-sign rendering of ancient writing in modern letters, so every sign stays accountable, then in signs: kur-ta (“from the mountains”), e₂-še₃ (“to the house”), e₂-a (“in the house”), e₂-a-ni (“his house”), e₂-bi (“its house — the city’s”), lugal-e (“the king, acting”).
3. Say aloud the three habits — verb last, grammar as tags, doer marked — and name one English sentence you could rebuild the Sumerian way.

Next: the case that hides.