Sumerian determinatives were written symbols that were not pronounced
Reference materials and linguistic sources state that Sumerian determinatives were written symbols used to mark semantic categories and were not pronounced.
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Wikisource: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cuneiform. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/Cuneiform
The difficulty of reading this script is enormously increased by the fact that many signs are polyphonous, i.e. they may have more than one syllabic value and also be used as an ideogram. Thus the sign 𒆳 has the ideographic values of matu, land, shadu, mountain, kashadu, to conquer, napachu, to arise (of the sun), and also the syllabic values kur, mad, mat, shad, shat, lat, nad, nat, kin and gin. This method of writing must lead to ambiguity, and this difficulty is helped somewhat by (4) determinatives, which are signs intended to indicate the class to which the word belongs. Thus, the 𒁹 is placed before names of persons, and 𒆳 (the ideogram for matu, country, and shadu, mountain) is placed before names of countries and mountains, and 𒀭 (ilu, god) before the names of gods. The cuneiform writing, begun by the Sumerians in a period so remote that it is idle to speculate concerning it, had a long and very extensive history. It was first adopted by the Semitic Babylonians, and as we have seen was modified, developed, nay almost made over. Their inscriptions History. are written in it from circa 4500 B.C. to the 1st century B.C.
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Determinative - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinative
Determinative A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may derive historically from glyphs for real words, and functionally they resemble classifiers in East Asian and sign languages. [1] [2] For example, Egyptian hieroglyphic determinatives include symbols for divinities, people, parts of the body, animals, plants, and books/abstract ideas, which helped in reading but were not pronounced. ## Cuneiform In cuneiform texts of Sumerian, Akkadian and Hittite languages, many nouns are preceded or followed by a Sumerian word acting as a determinative; this specifies that the associated word belongs to a particular semantic group. [1] These determinatives were not pronounced. [citation needed] In transliterations of Sumerian, the determinatives are written in superscript in upper case. Whether a given sign is a mere determinative (not pronounced) or a Sumerogram (a logographic spelling of a word intended to be pronounced) cannot always be determined unambiguously since their use is not a
How do we know that Sumerian determinatives were not pronounced?. https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/36085/how-do-we-know-that-sumerian-determinatives-were-not-pronounced
# How do we know that Sumerian determinatives were not pronounced? Tags: historical-linguistics, orthography, sumerian, cuneiform - Score: 8 - Views: 450 - Answers: 2 - Answered: yes - Asked by: OriginalOldMan (367 rep) - Asked: 2020-05-06 - Edited: 2020-05-06 - Site: linguistics ## Question I've read the following in Edzard's "Sumerian Grammar" from 2003: Determinatives: these are signs which precede or follow words or names in order to specify them as belonging to semantic groups. Determinatives can be proven not to have been pronounced (although doubt may exist in specific instances). I can't, however, find any other sources about this. How can it be proven? ## Answers ### Answer by Draconis (score: 6) Another good indication is the use of determinatives in linguistically-unrelated languages that share the same writing system. Classical Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform was used to write Sumerian (a language isolate), Akkadian (Semitic), Hittite (Indo-European), and a handful of others from various families. As far as we know, these languages don't have a common ancestor; they just happened to all be spoken in the same general area at a time when cuneiform was popular. And yet
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