Talk:Sumerian/Grammar/Lesson Two - Possessives

Thank you so much for this. I am just starting to learn Sumerian for postgrad research. It looks as though you changed the order of your lessons. The quick quiz for lesson two assumes knowledge of the genitive (.ak) and dative (.ir) case-forms, and includes house (e) and temple (e.gal), vocabulary which is not yet introduced, according to the new sequence. Alastair Haines 02:28, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Changes made
Thanks for catching these! I've fixed both issues. Hopefully adding more chapters as well soon. Mike.the.kitty 17:17, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

.ir
I haven't been able to find anything on the .ir suffix. Could it please be explained?

Changes made
All the case particles are now handled in a later lesson, in individual pages. Hopefully it will be a bit more fleshed out in time, but I have updated a bit for the Dative particle (.ir). Thanks for the comment! Mike.the.kitty

Lesson title
I have fixed the misspelling "posessive" several times in this lesson, but I don't know how to fix the lesson title itself.

Title fixed
I've used the "move" feature (it's a tab next to the "history" tab") to rename the article.

Thank you very much, Enlil :) I mis-spelled it consistently through the whole text. *DOH*! I also always mis-spell "seperate". No idea why. On the bright side, I've raised my confidence level that I am not a robot.

Mike.the.kitty (talk) 15:53, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

English to Sumerian quiz
English to Sumerian: "for her child"

using /.ir/ where for "for" ...dative case? Using .ir not yet explained.

the queen of your temple

using /.ak/ here but /.ak/ not yet explained. Also should /e/ be explained as also a temple? otherwise should we be writing: /e.gal.zu.ak/ ?? You currently have /e.zu.ak/

Thanks for the great work!!

the queen of your temple = nin e.zu.ak

A bit higher up on the same page, we learn that the posessive affixes change when they are attached to something in the genitive case. Specifically, ".zu" becomes ".za". "Of your temple" is genitive, so why isn't the correct answer "nin e.z a .ak"? On the page about the genitive case, we find this example:

the sister of my mother = nin ama.ğa

Here, "ĝu" seems to have morphed into "ĝa" as expected. Is the genitive possessive affix optional and replaces the ".ak" particle when it's used? A short explanation on one of the pages might be helpful.

(Btw., I'm new, both on Wikibooks and at learning Sumerian. I hope this is the right place for such questions? Sorry if it's not ;-) )

1st pl sent. -- is sent. “sentient”?
And if so, is “sentient” different from “animate”, or are they synonymous? Babbage (discuss • contribs) 20:56, 30 October 2016 (UTC)