>I was unaware that Sumerian was part of the Nostratic. This would >only
>hold if one accepts the obsolete theory of Sumerian as linked to
>Altaic. Or perhaps Dravidian. Neither of these links have gone >beyond the
>hypothetical stage.
Obsolete for you perhaps, I assure you that it is not. With self-evident
connections like nga-e "I"/-mu "my", za-e "you"/-zu "your" and in/-ani for
the pronouns *mu (IndoEuropean *me, Altaic *ben) and *tu (IndoEuropean
*tu/*twe, Altaic *sen) and *in (Altaic *an, Etruscan in, an, IndoEuropean
*i:-/*e), the connection is pretty overt.
However, grammatically, Sumerian is very different from Altaic or even
Dravidian (which needs its own seperate explanation) because it was one of
the first to seperate from Eurasiatic.
Despite this, the declensional system yields very good connections: ablative
-ta (Uralic *-ta, IE -�d), commitative -da (Altaic *da, IE *-dhi [locative])
and a terminative -s^e (IndoEuropean -�s & Etruscan -s [genitive]).
>Personally I feel Sumerian is a linguistic isolate - possibly from an
>extinct East Arabic pre-Afro-Asiatic language group. I have no
>evidence to base this on except that the Sumerians claim to have
>originally come from Bahrein.
Well if lack of evidence makes you happy then you just keep that wonderful
faith of yours. :)
- gLeN
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