Classification in Sumerian cuneiform and the implementation of iClassifier

Abstract

Sumerian, an agglutinative language of unknown affiliation, surfaced in mankind’s earliest written sources around 3300 BCE. It continued to play a salient role in the transmission of cuneiform cultures for more than three millennia, even after its disappearance as a vernacular (around 2000 BCE). From its beginnings, semantic classification played an important role in this initially predominantly semasiographic-ideographic script. Here, such classifications are contrasted with and compared to the normalized ‘consolidated’ standard set of pre- and post-nominal classifiers – generally known as ‘determinatives’ – which function chiefly as sortal classifiers. It is further suggested here that the relationship between classifying nouns and classified nouns is best described in terms of nominal apposition. This article further provides updated examples of how the relevant information was entered into the iClassifier digital tool, specially designed for such comparisons in order to improve our understanding of how cuneiform classifiers mark their host words and to make them comparable with similar features in other complex scripts and other languages. We will then briefly survey how the answers to queries in the iClassifier may help to illuminate ‘the diverse mindsets of ancient Mesopotamia’.