Editing Sumerian language (section)

== Interference from Akkadian and other late phenomena ==
In the Old Babylonian period and after it, the Sumerian used by scribes was influenced by their mother tongue, Akkadian, and sometimes more generally by imperfect acquisition of the language. As a result, various deviations from its original structure occur in texts or copies of texts from these times. The following effects have been found in the Old Babylonian period:<ref name=":12" />

* confusion of the animate and inanimate gender, resulting in use of incorrect gender pronouns;<ref name=":12" />
* occasional use of the animate plural ''-ene'' with inanimates;<ref name="Attinger 2009: 23"/>
* occasional use of the directive case marker -/e/ with animates;<ref>Jagersma (2010: 170)</ref>
* changes in the use of the nominal case markers so as to parallel the use of Akkadian prepositions, whereas the verbal case markers remain unchanged, resulting in mismatches between nominal and verbal case;<ref name=zol21/>
* generalized use of terminative -/še/ to express direction, displacing locative -/a/ as the expression of [[Illative case|illative]] and [[Sublative case|sublative]] meanings ("into" and "onto") and directive -/e/ as the expression of achieving contiguity with something;<ref>Zólyomi (2000: 9-13)</ref>
* treatment of the prefix sequences /b/-/i/- and /n/-/i/-, which originally could mark the causee in transitive verbs, as causative markers even with intransitive verbs;<ref name=zol21/>
* dropping of final -/m/ in the copula -/am/ and sometimes its replacement with -/e/;
* occurrence of -/e/ as a ''marû'' 3rd person singular marker even in intransitive verbs;<ref name=":31">[https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/etcsri/parsing/index.html ETCSRI's Morphological Parsing. Accessed 13.06.2024]</ref>
* occurrence of -/n/- as a transitive subject prefix in forms with a ''1st'' (and, rarely, also 2nd) person ergative participant;<ref name=":31" /><ref>Sallaberger (2023: 105)</ref>
* occurrence of pre-stem pronominal prefixes in ḫamṭu referring to an ''intransitive'' subject;<ref>Hayes (2000: 236-237)</ref>
* occasional incorporation of the constituent noun of the phrasal verb into the verb stem: e.g. ''ki-ag̃<sub>2</sub>'' or ''ki ...ki-ag̃<sub>2</sub>'' instead of ''ki ...ag̃<sub>2</sub>'' "to love";<ref>Attinger (2009: 24)</ref>
* confusion of the locative case (-/a/) and the directive case (-/e/), as well as the various prefix-case combinations;<ref name=zol21>Zólyomi (2017: 21)</ref>
* occasional use of the ergative/directive ending -/e/ instead of the genitive case marker -/a(k)/.

For Middle Babylonian and later texts, additional deviations have been noted:<ref name=":13" />

* loss of the contrast between the phonemes ''g'' (/g/) and ''g̃'' (/ŋ/), with the latter merging into the former, and use of the signs for ''g'' also for words with original ''g̃''<ref>Sallaberger (2023: 37)</ref>
* omission of the ergative marker -/e/ and apparent loss of the notion of an ergative case;
* use of 𒆤 ''-ke<sub>4</sub>'', originally expressing a sequence of the genitive marker -/ak/ and the ergative marker -/e/, simply as a marker of the genitive, equivalent to -/a(k)/ alone;
* use of the ablative -/ta/ instead of the locative -/a/;
* omission of the genitive marker -/a(k)/;''<ref name=":13" />''
* use of infrequent words, sometimes inappropriately, apparently extracted from lexical lists.<ref name="veldhuis" />''<ref name=":13" />''
* use of Emesal forms in non-Emesal contexts: e.g. /umun/ "lord" and /gašan/ "lady" (instead of 𒂗 ''en'' and 𒎏 ''nin''), moreover written with the innovated logograms 𒌋 and 𒃽, respectively.<ref>Barthelmus (2016: 231-233)</ref>