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| sumerian:gender [2008/04/16 10:27] – dahl | sumerian:gender [2008/04/16 10:28] (current) – dahl |
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| As Michalowski makes clear, there is no morphologically segmentable group of gender markers in Sumerian, but reflexes of the personal and impersonal genders show up in a number of places within the grammar: wh-words such as **a.ba** "who" and **a.na** "what"; third person [[possessive pronouns]] such as **-a.ni** "his/her" and **-bi** "its" and, crucially, as the lynchpin of a system of [[verbal agreement]]. | As Michalowski makes clear, there is no morphologically segmentable group of gender markers in Sumerian, but reflexes of the personal and impersonal genders show up in a number of places within the grammar: wh-words such as **a.ba** "who" and **a.na** "what"; third person [[possessive pronouns]] such as **-a.ni** "his/her" and **-bi** "its" and, crucially, as the lynchpin of a system of [[verbal agreement]]. |
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| Perhaps more importantly, however, grammatical gender occupies a place within an [[animacy]] hierarchy or, to be more precise, a hierarchy of [[animary | inherent lexical content]]. Sumerian is a so-called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_ergativity split ergative]] language and one of the hallmark's of many split ergative systems is that animacy or inherent lexical content plays a role in determining whether the case-marking on a particular nominal phrase is [[ergative-absolutive]] or [[accusative-nominative]]. | Perhaps more importantly, however, grammatical gender occupies a place within an [[animacy]] hierarchy or, to be more precise, a hierarchy of [[animary | inherent lexical content]]. Sumerian is a so-called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_ergativity|split ergative]] language and one of the hallmark's of many split ergative systems is that animacy or inherent lexical content plays a role in determining whether the case-marking on a particular nominal phrase is [[ergative-absolutive]] or [[accusative-nominative]]. |
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| == The role of grammatical gender in Sumerian grammatical theory == | == The role of grammatical gender in Sumerian grammatical theory == |
