Re: Proto-Romance

John C. wrote:
> Ray wrote:
> > And wrote:
> > > Retaining archaisms through the power of writing is interestingly
> > > different from deliberate purification (or invention of other sorts).
> > > The former on the whole seems to be a concomitant of writing & is,
> > > I believe, evident in most literate cultures, but the latter isn't.
> >
> > Yep, I agree - the latter does seem rare. Besides the development of CL,
> > only Sanskrit, Greek Katherevousa and the development of Classical Chinese
> > come to mind.
>
> I'll bet it happened with Sumerian in the hands of the Akkadians, too,
> but our materials are probably insufficient to be sure.
It did, in fact, and the documentation is relatively plentiful.
When you read Hammurabi's Code, you see only a handful of Sumerograms,
mostly representing gentilics and professions, and the rest of the cuneiform
signs are syllabics. By the time you reach documents from the period of the
Assyrian Empire, the documents virtually ooze with Sumerograms.  When in
class I had wondered if this was merely a reflection of the different
genres (one a law code intended actually to be used by barely literate
administrators of the Empire, the other a historical proclamation of
Sargon II boasting how violent he had been to rebels and Lesser Peoples),
it was explained that in fact Akkadian by Sargon II's time had become
diglossic, the common speech having lost all case distinctions, the
present subjunctive singular -u, etc.  These were retained in the
writing to a large extent, in addition to the acrolect being loaded
with Sumerian lexemes.

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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