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Sumerian language †

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PDFVolume 16. Ancient Relict Languages of the Near East
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Genealogy

Isolate

Geography

Main country: Iraq (show on the map)

Area maps from the encyclopedia (in Russian)

Map designer: Yuri Koryakov

Identifiers

Features

Phonemic structure

[A‑1] Number of degrees of vowel height Two [A‑1‑1]
[A‑2] Vowel height degrees Close and open [A‑2‑1]
[A‑3] Degrees of vowel backness Front and back [A‑3‑2]
[A‑4] Number of length degrees Two [A‑4‑2]
[A‑11] Inventory of obstruents by laryngeal features Opposition by aspiration [A‑11‑2]
[A‑12] Inventory of obstruents by manner of articulation Plosives, fricatives and affricates [A‑12‑3]
[A‑13] Inventory of obstruents by place of articulation Labial, coronal, dorsal, guttural and postuvular [A‑13‑2]
[A‑14] Inventory of labial obstruents by place of articulation Only bilabial [A‑14‑1]
[A‑15] Inventory of coronal obstruents by place of articulation Dental and alveolar [A‑15‑6]
[A‑16] Inventory of guttural obstruents by place of articulation Velar [A‑16‑1]
[A‑17] Inventory of postuvular obstruents by place of articulation Only glottal [A‑17‑2]
[A‑19] Inventory of sonorants by manner of articulation Nasal, liquid, vibrant and glide [A‑19‑6]
[A‑20] Inventory of sonorants by place of articulation Labial, coronal, dorsal and guttural [A‑20‑17]
[A‑21] Additional articulatory oppositions of sonorants Absent [A‑21‑1]

Prosodic phenomena

[B‑10] Target of vowel harmony Affix [B‑10‑3]
[B‑11] Feature of vowel harmony Height [B‑11‑3]
[B‑12] Trigger of vowel harmony First vowel of root [B‑12‑3]

Syllable

No filled features for this language.

Phonologic structure and phenomena

No filled features for this language.

Morphological type of language

[E‑1] Type of language by type of morpheme combination in a word Agglutinative with some fusional features [E‑1‑2]
[E‑4] Type of language by degree of morpheme cohesion Synthetic [E‑4‑5]

Nominal classifications

[F‑1] Number of agreement classes No agreement classes [F‑1‑1]
[F‑7] Nouns classifying categories Animacy/inanimacy [F‑7‑3]
[F‑9] Expression of animacy/inanimacy Lexical and morphological [F‑9‑6]

Number

[G‑1] Number in nouns Singular and plural [G‑1‑1]
[G‑4] Agreement in number Predicative [G‑4‑2]

Case meanings

[H‑1] Number of noun cases Eight-twelve [H‑1‑3]
[H‑4] Case marking of possessive relations Genitive [H‑4‑1]
[H‑5] Other means of expressing possessive relations Possessive pronouns [H‑5‑4]
[H‑6] Means of expressing spatial relations Noun affixes and verbal affixes [H‑6‑8]
[H‑8] Case marking of animate and inanimate nouns Same [H‑8‑1]

Verbal categories

[I‑1] Voice forms expression Category of voice is absent [I‑1‑1]
[I‑5] Tense forms General [I‑5‑6]
[I‑8] Syncretic expression of several verb meanings Absent [I‑8‑1]
[I‑10] Transitivity marker Absent [I‑10‑1]

Deictic categories

[J‑8] Expression of negation Negative affixes [J‑8‑1]
[J‑9] Negation marker position Preposition [J‑9‑3]

Parts of speech and inflection

[K‑2] Article types No articles [K‑2‑1]
[K‑8] Verb agreement types Subject and subject-object [K‑8‑4]
[K‑15] Attributive agreement types No attributive agreement [K‑15‑1]
[K‑16] Inflectional categories of noun Number and case [K‑16‑7]
[K‑17] Cumulative expression of several categories in noun Absent [K‑17‑1]
[K‑18] Inflection means Affixes [K‑18‑2]
[K‑19] Word form model Prefixal-suffixal [K‑19‑1]

Word formation

[L‑1] Word formation means Conversion, reduplication and compounding [L‑1‑18]
[L‑2] Derivation affixes Prefixes and suffixes [L‑2‑3]
[L‑3] Stems relations in stem compounding Apposition and subordination [L‑3‑5]

Simple sentence

[M‑1] Morphosyntactic alignment Ergative [M‑1‑5]
[M‑3] Dominant word order SOV [M‑3‑2]
[M‑4] Order of nouns and its modifier Modifier follows noun [M‑4‑2]
[M‑5] Pro-drop Possible [M‑5‑1]

Complex sentence

[N‑4] Compound sentence types Subordination and compounding [N‑4‑4]
[N‑5] Compound sentence syndesis and asyndeton Both syndesis and asyndeton possible [N‑5‑3]

Unfilled features

The encyclopedia contains no information

Feature is not applicable to this language