Considerations about the Contact among Languages and the Language Change. Rethinking Sumerian-Akkadian Bilingualism during the Third and Second Millennium B. C.

• Main Author: Rodrigo Cabrera
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro 2017-07-01
• Series: Revista Maracanan
• Subjects: Cambio Lingüístico; Sumerio; Acadio; Mesopotamia; Mar-tu
• Online Access: https://www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br/index.php/maracanan/article/view/28346

In this paper, we will consider the “language change” phenomenon to study the way in which two languages of Lower Mesopotamia, Sumerian and Akkadian, were linked and influenced each other between the third and second millennium BC from semantic and syntactic loans. Likewise, we will consider the ethnographic and archaeological approaches made by different scholars to think about the way in which both languages were linked. Finally, we will reflect on the use of place-names that points demographic alterity, which show, as in the case of the mar-tu, the existence of foreign populations with habits designated as inferiors, but which subsequently achieve socio-political hegemony in the region.