Title: Sumerian Lexicon
Subtitle: A Dictionary guide to the ancient Sumerian language
Published: 2006
Publisher: The David Brown Book Company
www.oxbowbooks.com
Editor: John A. Halloran
Hardback: ISBN: 0978642910 Pages: 336 Price: U.S. $ 110.00
Paperback: ISBN: 0978642902 Pages: 336 Price: U.S. $ 79.00
Abstract:
With 6,400 entries, this is the most complete available lexicon of ancient Sumerian vocabulary. It replaces version 3 of John Halloran's Sumerian Lexicon, which has served an audience of over 400,000 visitors at the web site http://www.sumerian.org/ since 1999. This published version adds over 2,600 new entries, and corrects or expands many of the previous entries.
Also, following the express wish of a majority of online lexicon users, the logogram words and the compound words are merged and sorted into purely alphabetical order. This book will be an indispensable reference for anyone trying to translate Sumerian texts. Also, due to the historical position of ancient Sumer as the world's first urban civilization, cultural and linguistic archaeologists will discover a wealth of information for research.
This published Sumerian Lexicon draws upon ancient bilingual word lists and a bibliography of 96 sources. It includes complete coverage of the 'women's speech' dialect Eme-sal in addition to the main dialect Eme-gir vocabulary. It indicates loanwords between Akkadian and Sumerian. This Sumerian dictionary aids the reader of texts with extensive coverage of Sumerian's grammatical particles, not just its nouns, verbs, and adjuncts.
Sample entry:
ku3-ta-du8-dam
to be redeemed/ransomed with silver ('silver' + instrumental case postposition - 'by means of' + 'to untie, release, redeem' + /-ed/ erweiterung + -am3, enclitic copula)
With the recovery of the Sumerian language, we honor the Sumerians for achieving so many important firsts at the start of human civilization. Sumerian civilization in southern Mesopotamia (Iraq) lasted for four thousand continuous years, from 6,000 BC to 2,000 BC. With the publication of this, the first modern Sumerian-English dictionary, both academics and the public can begin to understand how our distant ancestors thought via the words of their language.
Linguistic Field(s):
Language Description
Lexicography
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