>I don't see Ubaid as synonymous with Sumerian. Rather I see Ubaid >as a
>development of the pre-Sumerian substratum peoples.
Ah, you mean the S-Group speakers. We're talkin' a Burushaski-esque language
(an ergative one too :)
> > Gerry: Hmmmm. We're now talking language rather than people?
>
>Gerry - I suspect the answer to this is "both".
I suspect not. Which "Sumerians" are you speaking of again? What's the whole
scheme from beginning to end? Theoretically, the Sumerians being Nostratic
would have settled into the area over top of a previously established
language family which sat there maybe even before 15,000 BCE. This language
(or language group) would most likely be DeneCaucasian of the S-Group
subbranch, meaning that this substratum's linguistical features would lie
half way between Nostratic and BuruYen - Use of some word classes maybe
(although Nostratic lost its word classes), *si/*ni for 1rst person
singular, etc, possibly having become complex and Abkhaz-like in
polysynthesism. Let's get out the Sumerian dictionary and start searching
for substratum - yeeha!
The complexity of Sumerian grammar might be attributed to the areal
influence that such a language might have had. The Sumerian numbers however
seem to be native to Sumerian itself (ah, too bad). On the other hand,
Burushaski has a weird number system that I can't explain... Oh-oh, looks
like the case of the missing substratum. :)
- gLeN
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