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Gábor Zólyomi Copular Clauses and Focus Marking in Sumerian sales series_De Gruyter Studium Gábor Zólyomi Copular Clauses and Focus Marking in Sumerian Managing Editor: Katarzyna Grzegorek Associate Editor: Anna Borowska Language Editor: Allison Kirk Published by De Gruyter Open Ltd, Warsaw/Berlin This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license, which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. Copyright © 2014 Gábor Zólyomi ISBN: 978-3-11-040169-1 e-ISBN: 978-3-11-040170-7 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. Managing Editor: Katarzyna Grzegorek Associate Editor: Anna Borowska Language Editor: Allison Kirk www.degruyteropen.com Cover illustration: © Thinkstock, Clay bricks carrying the inscriptions of E-ana-tum, ruler of Lagash in the 24th c. BC. To Joachim Krecher, my teacher, colleague, and friend, who has taught me the value of disagreeing. Contents Introduction 1 1 Sumerian in a Nutshell 4 1.1 Introduction 4 1.2 The Sumerian Nominal and Verbal Template 7 2 Non-verbal Predicates in Sumerian 17 2.1 Introduction 17 2.2 Copular Clauses: the Most Important Characteristics 17 2.3 Copula Dropping: Non-verbal Predicates without a Copula 22 3 A Typology of Sumerian Copular Clauses 27 3.1 Introduction 27 3.2 The Classification of Copular Clauses in Linguistics 27 3.3 Copular Clauses in Sumerian 30 3.4 The Typology of Copular Clauses in Practice 52 3.5 Summary and Conclusions 54 4 Attributive Copular Biclausal Constructions 56 4.1 Introduction 56 4.2 Attributive CBCs and the Paratactic Relativization Strategy 57 4.3 Attributive CBCs and Appositions 69 4.4 Attributive CBCs in Which the CC Functions as Reason or Concessive Clause 81 4.5 Attributive CBCs Containing CCs with Left-dislocated Possessors 88 4.6 The Copula Functioning as Standard Marker 94 5 Specificational Copular Biclausal Constructions 101 5.1 Introduction 101 5.2 The Origin of the Sumerian Cleft Construction 102 5.3 Copula or Focus Marker? 112 6 Subordinate Clauses Followed by a Copula 152 6.1 Introduction 152 6.2 Thetic Sentences in Sumerian 154 6.3 Sentences with Polarity Focus 169 6.4 Summary and Conclusions 181 7 Summary and Outlook 182 References 186 Index of Quoted Texts 193 Index of Subjects 198 Abbreviations in the morphological glossings ~pl reduplication expressing verbal plurality ~pf reduplication expressing present-future tense 1sg first person singular 2sg second person singular 3nh third person non-human 3pl third person plural human 3sg third person singular human a agent (subject of a transitive verb) abl ablative case-marker or prefix abs absolutive case-marker acc accusative case-marker adv adverbiative anc anchor ant prefix of anteriority app appositive com comitative case-marker or prefix coor coordinator prefix cop copula cvn compound verb nominal element dat dative case-marker or prefix dem demonstrative pronoun dn divine name erg ergative case-marker fin finite-marker prefix gen genitive case-marker Gn geographical name h human l1 locative1 case-marker or prefix l2 locative2 case-marker or prefix l3 locative3 case-marker or prefix l4 the archaic locative enclitic -/ne/ m masculine mid middle prefix mod modal prefix neg negative prefix nh non-human nom nominative p patient (object of a transitive verb) pf present-future, or the marker of the present-future pl plural