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a look at certain typological features of the language. In contrast to all the
surrounding languages, Sumerian has ergative argument marking and, as
Nichols (1994) has shown, ergativity is relatively stable."
Prof. Piotr Michalowski
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~piotrm/cv1.htm

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Sumerian is an isolated language: there is no evidence that it is
related to any other language at all, living or dead. It certainly
cannot be connected with Indo-European (IE) or Semitic, nor can these
two be related to each other.

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"Sumerian is an isolate, a language with no known relatives. It can't be
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"Sumerian" 2nd printing June 1999, Languages of the World/Materials 68,
LINCOM EUROPA, Paul-Preuss-Str. 25, D-80995 Muenchen, Germany.
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Sumerian has the distinction of being the oldest attested language in

the world. Spoken in the southern part of ancient Mesopotamia, the
Iraq of today, its first texts date to about 3100 BCE. Sumerian died
out as a spoken language about 2000 BCE, but it was studied in the
Mesopotamian school system as a language of high culture for almost
two thousand more years. A language-isolate, Sumerian has no
obvious relatives. Typologically, Sumerian is quite different from
the Semitic languages which followed it in Mesopotamia. It is
basically SOV, with core grammatical relationships marked by affixes
on the verb, and with adverbial relationships marked by postpositions,
which are cross-referenced by prefixes on the verb. It is split
ergative; the perfect functions on an ergative basis, but the
imperfect on a nominative-accusative basis.
Because Sumerian is an isolate, and has been dead for thousands of
years, special problems arise in trying to elucidate its
grammar. There are still major challenges in understanding its
morphosyntax, and very little is known about Sumerian at the discourse
level. This volume will describe some of the major questions still to
be resolved.

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The School of Oriental and African Studies

(SOAS), University of London. In their Sumerian Language Studies
Brochure:
The School of Oriental and African Studies(SOAS), University of London.
In their Sumerian Language Studies Brochure:
Sumerian, the oldest known written language in human history, was spoken
in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and peripheral regions) throughout the third
millennium BC and survived as an esoteric written language until the death
of the cuneiform tradition around the time of Christ. The Sumerian
language, which is related to no other known tongue, was only properly
deciphered this century. A considerable literature in Sumerian is currently
being reconstructed from fragmentary clay tablets housed in the museums of
the world.
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Chicago Press.
In vocabulary, grammer, and syntax, however, Sumerian still stands alone
and seems to be unrelated to any other language, living or dead.
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Encyclopedia Britannica. 2004: Under Sumerian Language

language isolate and the oldest written language in existence. First attested
about 3100 BC in southern Mesopotamia, it flourished during the 3rd
millennium BC. About 2000 BC, Sumerian was replaced as a spoken
language by Semitic Akkadian (Assyro-Babylonian) but continued in written
usage almost to the end of the life of the Akkadian language, around the
beginning of the Christian era. Sumerian never extended much beyond its
original boundaries in southern Mesopotamia; the small number of its native
speakers was entirely out of proportion to the tremendous importance and
influence Sumerian exercised on the development of the Mesopotamian and
other ancient civilizations in all their stages.

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M.L. Thomsen, The Sumerian Language: An Introduction to Its History and

Grammatical Structure; Copenhagen 1984
J.L. Hayes, A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts; Malibu 1999
B. Alster, Proverbs of Ancient Sumer: The World's Earliest Proverb
Collections, 2 vols; Bethesda, Maryland, 1997.
Encyclopedia of the Ancient World / editor, Sharon Grimbly.
- London : Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000

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Sumerian and proto-Indo-European Lexical Equivalence - Latvian

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Sumerian si-in and Old Tamil cin: A study in the Historical Evolution of
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: "
1)
Responses to Sumerian-Ural-Altaic Affinities (CA 1971)
2)
A New Aspect of the Sumerian Question (AMJSLL 1906)
3)
Sumerian Lexicon (2000)
4)
On the Idea of Sumerian-Uralic-Altaic Affinities (CA 1973)
5)
Are the Sumerians and the Hungarians or the Uralic People Related? (CA
1976)

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