Elamite , also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Scythic , Median , Amardian , Anshanian and Susian , is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites . It was recorded in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite is generally thought to have no demonstrable relatives and is usually considered a language isolate . The lack of established relatives makes its interpretation difficult.
43-668: A sizeable number of Elamite lexemes are known from the Achaemenid royal inscriptions – trilingual inscriptions of the Achaemenid Empire , in which Elamite was written using Elamite cuneiform (circa 5th century BC), which is fully deciphered. An important dictionary of the Elamite language, the Elamisches Wörterbuch was published in 1987 by W. Hinz and H. Koch. The Linear Elamite script however, one of
86-603: A continuum, with various languages falling more toward one end or the other. For example, Japanese is generally agglutinative, but displays fusion in some nouns, such as otōto ( 弟 , "younger brother") , from oto + hito (originally woto + pito , "young, younger" + "person"), and Japanese verbs, adjectives, the copula, and their affixes undergo sound transformations. For example, kaku ( 書く , "to write; [someone] writes") affixed with masu ( ます , politeness suffix) and ta ( た , past tense marker) becomes kakimashita ( 書きました , "[someone] wrote", with
129-819: A high rate of affixes or morphemes per word, and to be very regular, in particular with very few irregular verbs – for example, Japanese has only two considered fully irregular , and only about a dozen others with only minor irregularity; Luganda has only one (or two, depending on how "irregular" is defined); while in the Quechua languages , all ordinary verbs are regular. Again, exceptions exist, such as in Georgian . Many unrelated languages spoken by Ancient Near East peoples were agglutinative, though none from larger families have been identified: Some well known constructed languages are agglutinative, such as Black Speech , Esperanto , Klingon , and Quenya . Agglutination
172-700: A kind of Suffixaufnahme in that the nominal class markers of the head are also attached to any modifiers, including adjectives, noun adjuncts , possessor nouns and even entire clauses. The history of Elamite is periodised as follows: Middle Elamite is considered the “classical” period of Elamite, but the best attested variety is Achaemenid Elamite, which was widely used by the Achaemenid Persian state for official inscriptions as well as administrative records and displays significant Old Persian influence. Persepolis Administrative Archives were found at Persepolis in 1930s, and they are mostly in Elamite;
215-566: A meaning of anteriority (perfect and pluperfect tense). The negative particle is in- ; it takes nominal class suffixes that agree with the subject of attention (which may or may not coincide with the grammatical subject): first-person singular in-ki , third-person singular animate in-ri , third-person singular inanimate in-ni / in-me . In Achaemenid Elamite, the inanimate form in-ni has been generalized to all persons, and concord has been lost. Nominal heads are normally followed by their modifiers, but there are occasional inversions. Word order
258-403: A nominalizing suffix and indicate nomen agentis or just members of a class. The inanimate third-person singular suffix -me forms abstracts. Some examples of the use of the noun class suffixes above are the following: Modifiers follow their (nominal) heads. In noun phrases and pronoun phrases, the suffixes referring to the head are appended to the modifier, regardless of whether the modifier
301-475: A non-past infinitive. The corresponding conjugations ( conjugation II and III ) are: In Achaemenid Elamite, the Conjugation 2 endings are somewhat changed: There is also a periphrastic construction with an auxiliary verb ma- following either Conjugation II and III stems (i.e. the perfective and imperfective participles), or nomina agentis in -r , or a verb base directly. In Achaemenid Elamite, only
344-421: A particular syntactic category , has a certain meaning ( semantic value ), and in inflecting languages, has a corresponding inflectional paradigm . That is, a lexeme in many languages will have many different forms. For example, the lexeme RUN has a present third person singular form runs , a present non-third-person singular form run (which also functions as the past participle and non-finite form),
387-462: A past form ran , and a present participle running . (It does not include runner, runners, runnable etc.) The use of the forms of a lexeme is governed by rules of grammar . In the case of English verbs such as RUN , they include subject– verb agreement and compound tense rules, which determine the form of a verb that can be used in a given sentence . In many formal theories of language , lexemes have subcategorization frames to account for
430-565: A synthetic language rather than an analytic one. Persian is an SOV language, thus having a head-final phrase structure. Persian utilizes a noun root + plural suffix + case suffix + post-position suffix syntax similar to Turkish. For example the phrase " mashinhashunra niga mikardam " meaning 'I was looking at their cars' lit. '(cars their at) (look) (i was doing)'. Breaking down the first word: mashin (car) + ha (plural suffix) + shun (possessive suffix) + ra (post-positional suffix) becomes Mashinhashunra. We can see its agglutinative nature and
473-545: A transition between Middle and Achaemenid Elamite, with respect to language structure. The Elamite language may have remained in widespread use after the Achaemenid period. Several rulers of Elymais bore the Elamite name Kamnaskires in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. The Acts of the Apostles (c. 80–90 AD) mentions the language as if it was still current. There are no later direct references, but Elamite may be
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#1732757042003516-466: A typological trait cannot be used as evidence of a genetic relationship to other agglutinative languages. The uncertain theory about Ural-Altaic proffers that there is a genetic relationship with this proto-language as seen in Finnish , Mongolian and Turkish , and occasionally as well as Manchurian , Japanese and Korean . Many languages have developed agglutination. This developmental phenomenon
559-462: A verbal noun, or “infinitive”. The verb distinguishes three forms functioning as finite verbs , known as “conjugations” . Conjugation I is the only one with special endings characteristic of finite verbs as such, as shown below. Its use is mostly associated with active voice, transitivity (or verbs of motion), neutral aspect and past tense meaning. Conjugations II and III can be regarded as periphrastic constructions with participles; they are formed by
602-651: Is subject–object–verb (SOV), with indirect objects preceding direct objects, but it becomes more flexible in Achaemenid Elamite. There are often resumptive pronouns before the verb – often long sequences, especially in Middle Elamite ( ap u in duni-h "to-them I it gave"). The language uses postpositions such as -ma "in" and -na "of", but spatial and temporal relationships are generally expressed in Middle Elamite by means of "directional words" originating as nouns or verbs. They can precede or follow
645-532: Is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination . In an agglutinative language, words contain multiple morphemes concatenated together, but in such a manner that individual word stems and affixes can be isolated and identified as to indicate a particular inflection or derivation, although this is not a rule: for example, Finnish is a typical agglutinative language, but morphemes are subject to (sometimes unpredictable) consonant alternations called consonant gradation . Despite
688-569: Is a typological feature and does not imply a linguistic relation, but there are some families of agglutinative languages. For example, the Proto-Uralic language , the ancestor of the Uralic languages , was agglutinative, and most descendant languages inherit this feature. But since agglutination can arise in languages that previously had a non-agglutinative typology, and it can be lost in languages that previously were agglutinative, agglutination as
731-478: Is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection . It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single root word . For example, in the English language , run , runs , ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, which can be represented as RUN . One form,
774-446: Is another noun (such as a possessor) or an adjective. Sometimes the suffix is preserved on the head as well: This system, in which the noun class suffixes function as derivational morphemes as well as agreement markers and indirectly as subordinating morphemes, is best seen in Middle Elamite. It was, to a great extent, broken down in Achaemenid Elamite, where possession and, sometimes, attributive relationships are uniformly expressed with
817-853: Is uncommon in Middle Elamite, but gradually becomes dominant at the expense of the nominal class suffix construction in Achaemenid Elamite. Middle Elamite (Šutruk-Nahhunte I, 1200–1160 BC; EKI 18, IRS 33): Transliteration: (1) ú šu-ut-ru-uk-nah-hu-un-te ša-ak hal-lu-du-uš-in-šu-ši- (2) -na-ak-gi-ik su-un-ki-ik an-za-an šu-šu-un-ka 4 e-ri-en- (3) -tu 4 -um ti-pu-uh a-ak hi-ya-an in-šu-ši-na-ak na-pír (4) ú-ri-me a-ha-an ha-li-ih-ma hu-ut-tak ha-li-ku-me (5) in-šu-ši-na-ak na-pír ú-ri in li-na te-la-ak-ni Transcription: U Šutruk-Nahhunte, šak Halluduš-Inšušinak-(i)k, sunki-k Anzan Šušun-k(a). Erientum tipu-h ak hiya-n Inšušinak nap-(i)r u-r(i)-me ahan hali-h-ma. hutta-k hali-k u-me Inšušinak nap-(i)r u-r(i) in lina tela-k-ni. Translation: Lexeme A lexeme ( / ˈ l ɛ k s iː m / )
860-418: The -mas- portion used to express a politely distanced social context to the intended audience) . A synthetic language may use morphological agglutination combined with partial usage of fusional features, for example in its case system (e.g., German , Dutch , and Persian ). Persian has some features of agglutination, making use of prefixes and suffixes attached to the stems of verbs and nouns, thus making it
903-551: The Xūz language was written circa 988 AD by Al-Muqaddasi , characterizing the Khuzi as bilingual in Arabic and Persian but also speaking an "incomprehensible" language at the town of Ramhormoz . The town had recently become prosperous again after the foundation of a market, and as it received an influx of foreigners and being a "Khuzi" was stigmatized at the time, the language probably died in
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#1732757042003946-498: The lemma (or citation form), is chosen by convention as the canonical form of a lexeme. The lemma is the form used in dictionaries as an entry's headword . Other forms of a lexeme are often listed later in the entry if they are uncommon or irregularly inflected. The notion of the lexeme is central to morphology , the basis for defining other concepts in that field. For example, the difference between inflection and derivation can be stated in terms of lexemes: A lexeme belongs to
989-438: The 11th century. Later authors only mention the language when citing previous work. Because of the limitations of the language's scripts, its phonology is not well understood. Its consonants included at least stops /p/ , /t/ and /k/ , sibilants /s/ , /ʃ/ and /z/ (with an uncertain pronunciation), nasals /m/ and /n/ , liquids /l/ and /r/ and fricative /h/ , which was lost in late Neo-Elamite. Some peculiarities of
1032-404: The addition of the nominal personal class suffixes to a passive perfective participle in -k and to an active imperfective participle in -n , respectively. Accordingly, conjugation II expresses a perfective aspect , hence usually past tense, and an intransitive or passive voice, whereas conjugation III expresses an imperfective non-past action. The Middle Elamite conjugation I is formed with
1075-501: The construction with the noun class suffixes. Nevertheless, a set of separate third-person animate possessives -e (sing.) / appi-e (plur.) is occasionally used already in Middle Elamite: puhu-e “her children”, hiš-api-e “their name”. The relative pronouns are akka “who” and appa “what, which”. The verb base can be simple ( ta- “put”) or “ reduplicated ” ( beti > bepti “rebel”). The pure verb base can function as
1118-530: The fact that Persian is able to affix a given number of dependent morphemes to a root morpheme, mashin (car). Turkish , too, is generally agglutinative, forming words in a similar manner: araba (car) + lar (plural) + ın (possessive suffix, performing the same function as "of" in English) + a (dative suffix, for the recipient of an action, like "to" in English) forms arabalarına (lit. "to their cars"). However, these suffixes depend upon vowel harmony : doing
1161-481: The following suffixes: In Achaemenid Elamite, the loss of the /h/ reduces the transparency of the Conjugation I endings and leads to the merger of the singular and plural except in the first person; in addition, the first-person plural changes from -hu to -ut . The participles can be exemplified as follows: perfective participle hutta-k “done”, kulla-k “something prayed”, i.e. “a prayer”; imperfective participle hutta-n “doing” or “who will do”, also serving as
1204-513: The governed nouns and tend to exhibit noun class agreement with whatever noun is described by the prepositional phrase: i-r pat-r u-r ta-t-ni "may you place him under me", lit. "him inferior of-me place-you-may". In Achaemenid Elamite, postpositions become more common and partly displace that type of construction. A common conjunction is ak "and, or". Achaemenid Elamite also uses a number of subordinating conjunctions such as anka "if, when" and sap "as, when". Subordinate clauses usually precede
1247-458: The imperative. The prohibitative is formed by the particle anu/ani preceding Conjugation III. Verbal forms can be converted into the heads of subordinate clauses through the addition of the nominalising suffix -a , much as in Sumerian : siyan in-me kuši-hš(i)-me-a “the temple which they did not build”. -ti / -ta can be suffixed to verbs, chiefly of conjugation I, expressing possibly
1290-709: The local language in which, according to the Talmud , the Book of Esther was recited annually to the Jews of Susa in the Sasanian period (224–642 AD). Between the 8th and 13th centuries AD, various Arabic authors refer to a language called Khuzi or Xūz spoken in Khuzistan , which was unlike any other Iranian language known to those writers. It is possible that it was "a late variant of Elamite". The last original report on
1333-528: The number and types of complements. They occur within sentences and other syntactic structures . A language's lexemes are often composed of smaller units with individual meaning called morphemes , according to root morpheme + derivational morphemes + affix (not necessarily in that order), where: The compound root morpheme + derivational morphemes is often called the stem . The decomposition stem + desinence can then be used to study inflection. Agglutinative language An agglutinative language
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1376-438: The number of logograms increased. The complete corpus of Elamite cuneiform consists of about 20,000 tablets and fragments. The majority belong to the Achaemenid era, and contain primarily economic records. Elamite is an agglutinative language , and its grammar was characterized by an extensive and pervasive nominal class system. Animate nouns have separate markers for first, second and third person. It can be said to display
1419-479: The occasional outliers, agglutinative languages tend to have more easily deducible word meanings compared to fusional languages , which allow unpredictable modifications in either or both the phonetics or spelling of one or more morphemes within a word, usually resulting from a shortening of the word or to make pronunciation easier. Agglutinative languages have generally one grammatical category per affix while fusional languages combine multiple into one. The term
1462-469: The other hand, in a word such as runs , the singular suffix -s indicates the verb is both in third person and present tense, and cannot be further broken down into a "third person" morpheme and a "present tense" morpheme; this behavior is reminiscent of fusional languages. The term agglutinative is sometimes incorrectly used as a synonym for synthetic , but that term also includes fusional languages. The agglutinative and fusional languages are two ends of
1505-529: The remains of more than 10,000 of these cuneiform documents have been uncovered. In comparison, Aramaic is represented by only 1,000 or so original records. These documents represent administrative activity and flow of data in Persepolis over more than fifty consecutive years (509 to 457 BC). Documents from the Old Elamite and early Neo-Elamite stages are rather scarce. Neo-Elamite can be regarded as
1548-555: The same to ev ("house") forms evlerine (to their houses). However, there are other features of the Turkish language that could be considered fusional, such as the suffixes for the simple present tense. This is the only tense where, rather than having a suffix did negation which can be included before the temporal suffix, there are two different suffixes – one for affirmative and one for negative. Giving examples using sevmek ("to love" or "to like"): Agglutinative languages tend to have
1591-404: The scripts used to write the Elamite language circa 2000 BC, has remained elusive until recently. The following scripts are known or assumed to have encoded Elamite: Later, Elamite cuneiform , adapted from Akkadian cuneiform , was used from c. 2500 on. Elamite cuneiform was largely a syllabary of some 130 glyphs at any one time and retained only a few logograms from Akkadian but, over time,
1634-458: The spelling have been interpreted as suggesting that there was a contrast between two series of stops ( /p/ , /t/ , /k/ as opposed to /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ ), but in general, such a distinction was not consistently indicated by written Elamite. Elamite had at least the vowels /a/ , /i/ , and /u/ and may also have had /e/ , which was not generally expressed unambiguously. Roots were generally CV, (C)VC, (C)VCV or, more rarely, CVCCV (the first C
1677-428: The third option exists. There is no consensus on the exact meaning of the periphrastic forms with ma- , but durative, intensive or volitional interpretations have been suggested. The optative is expressed by the addition of the suffix -ni to Conjugations I and II. The imperative is identical to the second person of Conjugation I in Middle Elamite. In Achaemenid Elamite, it is the third person that coincides with
1720-404: The verb of the main clause. In Middle Elamite, the most common way to construct a relative clause is to attach a nominal class suffix to the clause-final verb, optionally followed by the relativizing suffix -a : thus, lika-me i-r hani-š-r(i) "whose reign he loves", or optionally lika-me i-r hani-š-r-a . The alternative construction by means of the relative pronouns akka "who" and appa "which"
1763-484: The “ genitive case ” suffix -na appended to the modifier: e.g. šak X-na “son of X”. The suffix -na , which probably originated from the inanimate agreement suffix -n followed by the nominalizing particle -a (see below), appeared already in Neo-Elamite. The personal pronouns distinguish nominative and accusative case forms. They are as follows: In general, no special possessive pronouns are needed in view of
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1806-569: Was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt to classify languages from a morphological point of view. It is derived from the Latin verb agglutinare , which means "to glue together". For example, the English word antidisestablishmentarianism can be broken up into anti- "against", dis- "to deprive of", establish (here referring to the formation of the Church of England), -ment "the act of", -arian "a person who", and -ism "the ideology of". On
1849-579: Was usually a nasal). Elamite is agglutinative but with fewer morphemes per word than, for example, Sumerian or Hurrian and Urartian . It is mostly suffixing. The Elamite nominal system is thoroughly pervaded by a noun class distinction, which combines a gender distinction between animate and inanimate with a personal class distinction, corresponding to the three persons of verbal inflection (first, second, third, plural). The suffixes that express that system are as follows: Animate: Inanimate: The animate third-person suffix -r can serve as
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