44 PRINCE— PRONOUNS AND VERBS OF SUMERIAN. [April 23, 



stood for mu-\ while mu, ' he ' did not contain this element. This is 

 equally true of the ^-prefix of the second person varying with i, 

 cited by Poebel as characteristic. Are we to understand an ^-ele- 

 ment hidden in every second personal equation ; ba-^ im-, in-, mi-, 

 ma-, mu-? The latter question must be answered in the negative, 

 because, as just shown, e was not used exclusively of the second 

 person. An examination of the paradigms as given by me in this 

 paper will show the improbability of such a proposition. 



The first thought which strikes the philologist studying this maze 

 of apparently contradictory forms suggests the theory that in 

 Sumerian, as in other languages, person in the verb must have 

 expressed by the tone. This idea I suggested in AJSL. XIX., 

 pp. 205-206, but no Sumerologist has ever gone into the matter. All 

 scholars in this line have preferred, either to deny the distinction 

 of pronouns by the verbal prefixes or else to suggest a difference in 

 quantity (Paul Haupt, Sfg., p. 19, n. 6; Bertin, PSBA. V (1882-3), 

 pp. 19 ff). But a difference in quantity or "accent," as some call 

 it, would have been indicated at least by a prolongation of the vowel 

 of the prefix. Real voice-tone would not have been so designated, 

 any more than it is Chinese Wen-Li to-day. Grammatical tones 

 actually exist in African Yoruba, as He re, ' thy house ' but He re 

 (another tone), 'his house'; in this language o = 'thou' but o 

 (another tone) ='he, she, it.' Nothing could be more suggestive 

 than this parallel (cf . S. Crowther, " Grammar of the Yoruba 

 Language" (London, 1852), p. 12). I cite it, not of course with 

 the intention of connecting Sumerian with Yoruba, but simply to 

 demonstrate the possibility of toned grammatical elements which do 

 not occur in Chinese. The three persons expressed by ha-, vni-, in-, 

 mi- and mu-, the two persons by ma- and the similar apparently in- 

 discriminate use of the infixes, noted above, all point only to such 

 a solution, which is far more reasonable than the idea that hidden 

 vowels exist in such prefixes and infixes. If these vowels were 

 present, how were they distinguished? There is nothing in the 

 inscriptions to betray their existence. The Chinese do not indicate 

 tones in their writing, because they are as readily understood by the 

 reader of a living language, as an English reader understands the 

 distinction between words of identical sound and difference of mean- 



