Whittaker - Linguistic Anthropology and Emesal

Linguistic Anthropology and the Study of

Emesal as (a) Women’s Language

One of the most controversial topicswithin Sumerology – and Assyri-ology as a whole – is surely the

question of the nature and function of Eme-sal as a form of the Sumerian language.Scholarly attempts to address this issue goback to the very beginnings of Sumerologyand have, like all major issues in Assyrio-logy, generated considerable heat and pas-sion among the protagonists. The yieldfrom this investment has not always ap-peared to justify the expenditure of time andenergy involved, as the anticlimactic con-clusions of Manfred Schretter’s importantEmesal-Studien (1990)1 clearly show. Moststatements in the academic literature to datehave addressed – all too often only in pas-sing – the issue as to whether or not Emesalis a women’s language.

Let us examine the various scenarios2

proposed for Emesal over the course of thelast one-and-a-quarter centuries.

Emesal has been variously described,often on little more than inspired impress-ionism, as:

(A) — a form of speech peculiar to women:1. women’s speech (e.g. Delitzsch 1878: 5to the present)2. a discrete women’s language (Sayce1878: 418 to the present)

(B) — a stage in language development:3. an archaic form of Sumerian (Haupt1881: 22-23)4. a lexically younger form of Sumerian(Scholtz 1931: 48)

(C) — a jargon:5. the jargon of a particular profession(Weissbach 1898: 155-56)6. the jargon of a particular class (Haupt1917/1918: 240-47)

(D) — a regional dialect:7. a regional phenomenon, especially anorth Sumerian dialect (e.g. Scholtz 1931:48)8. a south Sumerian dialect, specifically thedialect of Lagash (Bauer 1998: 435-36)

(E) — a register, style or manner of speech:9. effeminate speech (Prince 1908: xix)10. the broad speech of country bumpkins(Gadd 1924: 41-42)11. genteel speech, as opposed to women’sspeech (Oppenheim 1964: 378 n. 25, CAD 4148)12. fine/thin language (Parpola 1975: 254-55)13. a “sweet” pronunciation (Alster 1975:226)14. a style associated with women that was“meant to be ingratiating and so used forrequests” (Jacobsen 1988: 131)15. thin or attenuated speech, possibly sungby castrati singing in falsetto (Hallo 1995:1872)

1 Unfortunately, this valuable work is marred by theexcessive number of typographical errors pervading it.This is most serious in the data section containing theEmesal – Emegir lexical equivalencies. Schretter’s in-clusion of conflicting systems of transcription is a furthercomplication that, regrettably, detracts from the clarity

of his presentation.2 For further details on most of the sundry positionstaken on Emesal see Schretter (1990: 1-10), from whomI gratefully borrow the references to Haupt, Sayce,Scholtz and Speiser.

Gordon Whittaker Göttingen

S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting (eds.)CRRAI 47/I (Helsinki 2002)ISBN 951-45-9054-6

WHITTAKER EMESAL AS (A) WOMEN’S LANGUAGE

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(F) — the speech of non-Sumerians:16. Sumerian as spoken by non-Mesopota-mians, specifically Proto-Elamites (Speiser1930: 49ff)17. the narrow language of Mesopotamians,specifically substrate populations (Salonen1973: 9-10)

(G) — an artificial medium:18. errors of Akkadian scribes attemptingto manipulate a cryptographic system (Halé-vy in Weissbach 1898: 68-69)19. an artificial, non-spoken language(Landsberger 1933: 177)20. a literary dialect (Falkenstein and vonSoden 1953: 28-29; 1964: 18 to the present)21. an artificial medium of lyrical expres-sion (Rosengarten 1968: 125-27).

Some of these oft contradictory charac-terizations are based on the perceived socie-tal context in which Emesal occurs, as in thewomen’s language thesis; others on themeaning of the name Emesal, as in the caseof Gadd (1924) and Oppenheim (1964); stillothers on a mix of perceived characteristics,as in Falkenstein and von Soden (1953) andThomsen (1984: 285-94). Several of the de-scriptions of Emesal, particularly thosefrom the first half-century, have fallen bythe wayside as our knowledge and under-standing of Sumerian have increased.

Historically central to the Emesal issuehas always been the dual analysis of thespeech-form’s name and societal context.The name Emesal is to this day only half-understood. The noun eme is Sumerian for‘tongue,’ and, by extension, ‘speech’ and

‘language.’ The modifier s a l is more elu-sive. Its sign, derived from an Uruk IV de-piction of the pubic triangle, can be read ina number of ways: mun us or mí ‘woman,’ga l 4 ‘vulva,’ and s a l. An original mistakenassumption that sal meant ‘woman’ inspiredand fired much of the early thinking in Assyri-ology on women’s language, or as tellinglyput by some of the male scholars of the day,the “Sprache der Weiber.”3 The eventualrecognition that sal did not in fact mean‘Weib’ led to a shift in emphasis to the adjec-tival nuances of the still elusive s a l. Gadd(1924) and Falkenstein (1953) based theirrendition ‘broad speech’ (breite Sprache) onthe equation sa l = rapašu ‘widen, broaden,’although s a l should here be read mim onthe evidence of the Izi lexical list entrysa l mi-im = ru-up-p[u-šu] (Izi J ii 19).4

The crucial evidence that tipped the scalestowards s a l as second component of thedialect term came not from Sumerian, butfrom Akkadian, in the loan forms ummisal-lu ‘Emesal-composition (?)’ (CDA 422) andemesallu ‘fine taste’ (CAD E 148), var. me-sallu, ‘(desig. of salt)’ (CDA 208), all pres-umed to be a rendition of the word em e-sa l. The Sumerian equivalent of the latterloan, mu n em e- sa l - l a, means literally‘salt of fine taste,’ or, better, ‘salt fine to thetongue.’ As the CAD notes, it was alreadyknown from the writing em e- sa l - l a in thecolophon of Emesal Voc. II that the Sume-rian term for the dialect must end in an l.

Of special interest here is the lexical equ-

3 It is interesting to note that with the increasing partici-pation of women in German Assyriology the antiquatedand, at least in part, negatively loaded term Weib inWeibersprache was discreetly dropped, to be replaced bythe neutral Frau (and Frauensprache).4 Indeed, I suggest that this might remove a problem thathas been vexing Balke (2002: 31 n. 5; 45; cf., however,Selz 2002: 683), namely the apparent juxtaposition oftwo dimensional adjectives read sa l, one meaning‘broad,’ the other ‘thin.’ Instead of a pair of homophonessharing the same semantic field of dimension, we wouldnow have a more realistic contrast of mim ‘broad’ andsa l ‘thin.’ If there were in fact two dimensional adjec-

tives read sa l it would be necessary to consider thepossibility of tonal differentiation or of a distinction insome other aspect of the phonology, clouded by thelimitations of the script. Selz’ proposal that s a l ‘broad’and sa l ‘thin, narrow’ are reconcilable as oppositionalsenses of the same word, similar to Sumerian nun (orLatin altus) ‘high; deep,’ overlooks, I think, the fact thatpolar terms such as the latter work because they refer toextension along an axis from a single base (and usuallydo not refer to the same thing in both senses), somethingthat cannot be said of the opposition broad/narrow, whereconfusion must arise if one and the same term is used.


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ation lú eme- sa l = lu-ru-u (CT 37 24r. ii13′ [App. to Lu]), which the CAD (E 148)translates as ‘a well-spoken man,’ takingthe morphemes literally as ‘fine-tonguedperson.’ This is a far cry from Gadd’s ‘clown,countryman,’ “and thus a man of broadspeech” (1924: 42), which conjures up morethe image of a hay-chewing country bump-kin than of a suave and eloquent orator. Themost recent effort at rendering the seman-tics of Akk. lurû was made by the CDA(186): ‘man with feminine voice (?).’ Thisis a clear attempt, harking back to vonSoden’s “Mann mit Fistelstimme” (AHw565, following Zimmern 1915/1916: 227-28), to reconcile the term with the notion ofEmesal as the speech of women, an asso-ciation explicitly rejected by the CAD.Miguel Civil (pers. comm.) has kindly in-formed me that lurû most likely refers to amanner of articulation involving the teeth.I am not, however, aware of any basis forthis analysis beyond a literal interpretationof the modifier em e- sa l.

The frequent references to Emesal as thespeech of women, or even as a women’sdialect or language, obviously are foundedon more than mere speculation as to theoriginal meaning of the name. They reflectthe widespread observation that Emesal isspoken by, or put into the mouths of, god-desses and women in certain literary genres.The exact nature of these genres of culticlamentations, letter-prayers and love songswill not be discussed here (for an overviewsee Black 1991 and Hallo 1995: 1871-81;see also Sefati 1998).

The Emesal compositions within the cult-song genres known as the b a lagé ande r š emma were sung, whereas the prayertypes e r šah un gé a and š u i l a may have beenrecited (see Black 1991: 25 contra Maul1988: 25). Both categories were the centre-

piece of ritual performances by a specialclass of temple personnel, the ga la (Akk.kalû), to the accompaniment of musical in-struments. The sexual orientation of the g a lahas been the focus of intense interest, notleast because of its potential bearing on thesociocultural context of Emesal, that is, onthe question of the latter’s possible status asa genderlect, a type of sociolect (or socialdialect) related to gender.

It has often been suggested that the g a lawas a eunuch. This appears to have beenproposed for the first time by Allotte de laFuÿe (1921: 121). It dovetails with vonSoden’s rendition of the lú eme- s a l as a“Mann mit Fistelstimme,” cited above, andfinds its most recent echo in Hallo’s visionof “castrati singing in falsetto” (1995:1872). As appealing as this vision may beto some, no direct, or even reasonably co-gent, evidence has ever been proffered thatthe genitals of the g a la suffered the fate ofthe pre-modern choirboy. In another (undoc-umented) attempt to rationalize the associ-ation of a class of males with Emesal, Fal-kenstein and von Soden (1953: 28) specu-lated that the male g a la may have beenpreceded historically by priestesses chargedwith the same office. There is, indeed, someevidence for female g a la in Archaic OldBabylonian times (Black 1991: 26-27), butalmost nothing is known about them at pres-ent beyond the fact of their existence.

Jacobsen (1959: 482-83), in his commen-tary on Gordon’s (1959) edition of Sume-rian proverbs, dismissed the eunuch hypo-thesis gently by pointing to Proverb 2.99 –one of a series of sayings poking fun at theg a la – which begins: ga la - e du mu- n i ah a -ba -an -da - r i x- r i x(RA.RA) “The kalû-priest, if he is engendering a (lit. ‘his’) son,(will say:).” Jacobsen, noting that a—r i x-r i x means literally ‘to ejaculate semen,’5

5 Jacobsen draws attention to Text A, which in his ana-lysis offers the parallel construction a a -ba-da -zé-em3

‘when he has given forth semen.’


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comments wryly that “the saying as hereinterpreted is not very favorable to the be-lief that the kalû-priest was a eunuch” (op.cit. 483). Sadly, precisely this interpreta-tion has been thrown out in the most recentedition of the proverbs (Alster 1997: I 65),where the same passage is translated: ‘Alamentation priest hurled his son into thewater’!6 The text continues with the ga la’swords: u r u ki mà -a -g im h é -dù ka l ammà- e - g im h é - en- t i “May he build citiesas I do, may he give life to the Nation as Ido!” (Jacobsen’s translation). Alster,weighing the variants, renders the passageonly slightly differently: u r u ki mà - g i mhé-d ù u n mà-e -g im hé - t i “Let the citybuild like me, let the people live like me!”A case can, of course, be made for eitherinterpretation, but Jacobsen’s has a slightedge if the variants are taken into account.7

Neverthless, this is no smoking gun in theinvestigation of the g a la’s virility.

An alternative tack was taken by Krecher(1966: 36 and n. 99), who documented theexistence of children of a ga l a outside of aliterary context, followed shortly by Renger(1969: 192-93), who noted a reference to aga l a as ‘patriarch,’ (lit. ‘house elder,’puršum bitim), as well as the fact that aga l a could not only have a family but alsohave sons that inherit his profession. Whilethese instances do not yet clinch the case forthe sex life of the average ga l a, they castserious doubt on the eunuch hypothesis.Diakonoff (1975: 115 n. 31) deflects theimplications of the new evidence by ar-guing that not all g a la need have been eu-nuchs – any more than a Vatican choirboyneed have been one in the past. But hisclaim that the proverb gibes would onlystrike home if the ga la were a eunuch rings

a little hollow. More evidence is needed.8

We know, of course, that the gala sangand recited Emesal as part of his cultic ac-tivities. What is unclear is the extent towhich he used the dialect as an active me-dium of communication, if at all. Proverbs2.99A, 2.100, and 2.101 (Alster 1997: I65-66) have the ga l a speak Emesal ineveryday life, but this may be no more thana means of stereotyping him, in a mannercharacteristic of satire. The close and pub-lic association of the ga la with goddesses,whose words he was accustomed to singingin Emesal in the first person, may have ledto his jocular depiction as an effeminate andunworldly buffoon – a depiction only ofrelevance in this context. One need onlyrecall the exaggerated imitations of an in-sipid sermon style that are employed effec-tively as a humorous device by comedianstoday for stereotyping even the everydayspeech of Christian clergy.

Among the goddesses recorded usingEmesal the most important is Inanna,together with her separately named aspects.While Emesal is the dialect of choice whengoddesses speak, harangue and wail,Emegir (or the ‘main dialect,’ as it is oftencalled in Assyriology) is characteristicallythe tongue of male deities cited in the sametexts and genres. Not only goddesses butalso mortal women are generally held byscholars to speak Emesal in literary con-texts, but the case for human females speak-ing the dialect is considerably weaker thanthe case to be made for divine females. Infact, the evidence for mortal women andgirls actually using Emesal still needs to bepresented. Many of the instances of womenspeaking in the Emesal corpus are brief andambiguous, often reduced to simple excla-

6 Alster reads the verb as a— ra- ra.7 See also the discussion by Diakonoff (1975: 115 n. 31),who supports Jacobsen’s translation on the whole buttakes issue with the inferences he draws from it.

8 A valuable new study by Jerrold S. Cooper, ‘Genre,Gender and the Sumerian Lamentation’ (MS, to be pub-lished in late 2002), makes a well-reasoned plea for adifferentiated view of the gala over time and space.


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mations like ‘My child!’ (e.g. Erš. 1.2 39,41 in Cohen 1981: 114), which, recorded asd um u- mu, appears at first glance moreEmegir than Emesal. The characteristic, butinfrequent, Emesal orthography for Emegird um u is du 5- mu (Schretter 1990: 166 no.79), although the opaque logogram du muis frequently used in both dialects.

In Proverbs 1.125, 1.144, 1.169, and1.192 (Alster 1997: I 27, 29, 34, 38) one ortwo morphemes each betray the text asEmesal, but the fact that women or girls,rather than goddesses or others, are speak-ing is always implicit, never explicit. Thedialect seems to be employed here as a lit-erary device for indicating a general ca-tegory of female subject (mother, wife,bride, lady), where further specificationwould be out of place.

A further indicator that women did not infact speak Emesal is that the dialect is notused when women are known and named orcited in a non-literary context. The greatestknown author of Sumerian cultic literature,the princess Enheduanna, did not write inEmesal, nor did she quote others speakingit. In her composition, the n in - me- šá r - r a(e.g. Hallo and van Dijk 1968), which shededicated to Inanna, the author never onceemploys Emesal, even when she is writingin the first person and identifying herself byname.

There are, in fact, other categories ofbeings or entities known to have employedEmesal on at least some occasions. One ofthese is a cow. In CT 36 47-50 III 24 wehave the following passage: i m- ma- a l -l a - t a m a-a im-m a-a l - l a - t a ma-a whichSchretter (1990: 170 no. 90), apparentlyafter Kramer (uncited), renders as ‘from thecow: ‘where!’ From the cow: ‘where!’ Thecow is using Emesal: ma - a is the equival-

ent of Emegir me- a ‘where?’ Furthermore,the cow is not simply speaking Emesal; it islowing Emesal. The wordplay in the textderives from the fact that the utterance of acow is passably similar to the pronunciationof the dialect interrogative. Now, it is high-ly unusual for a cow’s lowing to be renderedwith the help of an /a/ vowel. Almost allattestations of such onomatopoeic terms inone cross-cultural survey9 are characterizedby /m/ + high to mid back vowel, i.e. avowel in the general vicinity of /u/ or /o/. Anumber of scholars have argued for theexistence of an /o/ vowel in Sumerian. Themost important case to date was made byBoisson (1989) on the basis of statisticalprobability and on an assessment of thenaturalness of the Sumerian vocalic system.I would argue, therefore, that it is highlylikely that Emesal m a- a contained an /o/vowel, for which there was no slot in theAkkadian-derived syllabary used forphonetic Sumerian.

Even as humble a creature as a fly isrecorded speaking Emesal. In an eršemmaof Dumuzi, the goddess Inanna is ad-dressed by a fly with the memorable words:é -kaš-a -ka é- g ir in -na -ka dumu- mu-lu-kù- zu- ke 4- ne dè- mu- un- t i - l e “Letthe young of the wise one live in the ale-house and in the house of fruit!” (Erš. 16521-22 in Cohen 1981: 88-89). In an e r š em-ma of Inanna and Dumuzi (Erš. 97 52 inCohen 1981: 76, 81) a g a l 5- l á demon pla-guing Dumuzi addresses him in Emesal as:d am ga - š a - an-k a d umu zé - e r - t ur - r a“Spouse of Inanna, son of Duttur,” and evenDumuzi himself resorts to the dialect a fewlines later (75) when he calls on Utu: me-r e- mu me-r e- maš- dà na -me- e- g i 4 “Youshould turn my feet into the ‘feet’ of agazelle!” Finally, not just animate beings

9 This takes the form of a compilation by Cathy Ball ofGeorgetown University’s Linguistics Dept. It can be con-

sulted on the Internet at <http://www.georgetown.edu/cball/animals/cow.html>.


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have been known to speak Emesal; as wesee, for example, when a temple exclaims:a mu- g i - g a “Oh, my hierodule!” (Erš. 10622 in Cohen 1981: 70-71).

All too often the identification of a text,or of a passage within it, as Emesal is madedifficult by a general scribal preference forlogograms. Variant text versions may con-trast in their use of Emegir or Emesal forthe same lines. In no few instances mixedsyllabic spellings occur, where the Emegirform of one word (for which there is adivergent Emesal equivalent) is clearlygiven, followed by a syllabically spelt Eme-sal word. This brings us to the question ofnaturalness. The inconsistency with whichEmesal is used, or made visible, in a givencomposition of a typically Emesal genre isnot in itself an argument against the natu-ralness of a dialect, even a literary dialect.Spoken dialects and languages, such as e.g.Swabian and Low German, fluctuate intheir integration of main dialect, e.g. HighGerman, features depending on such factorsas the speaker and the occasion. Users ofliterary dialects vary in the degree of theiradherence to norms. It may suffice to in-clude a few high-profile terms from a givendialect to indicate a specific setting or in-tent.

Regional dialects frequently underlie lit-erary dialects, but this does not mean thatthere is ever a one-to-one correspondencebetween the two (cf. Coseriu 1988: 150-51).In Ancient Greece the Homeric dialect,based on a somewhat Aeolicized form ofEast Ionic, was traditionally used in epicliterature and hexameters. Choral lyricpoetry and the choral parts of tragedieswere composed in a form of Doric, but in nospecific regional or local Doric dialect. The

dialogues in dramas, on the other hand,were set in Attic.

A different but comparable instance in-volves Middle Indic literature. A parallelbetween the dialect situation in Sumer andthat prevailing in India between Sanskritand Prakrit has been proposed by Falken-stein and von Soden (1953: 29), who writewith regard to Emesal as a probablewomen’s language:

Dabei drängt sich uns sogleich ein Ver-gleich mit einer Regelung des Sanskrit-Dra-mas auf, in dem die Männer Sanskrit, dieFrauen dagegen Prakrit, das ist eine jüngereSprachstufe des Sanskrits, sprechen. Ob dasEmesal eine ausschließlich der literarischenÄußerung vorbehaltene Sprachform ist, ver-mögen wir noch nicht zu sagen.

And indeed nothing more was ever said ofit. What Falkenstein and von Soden fail toadmit, and Schretter (1990: 5) to clarify,10

is that Hommel (1882: 282-83) made theoriginal analogy more than seventy yearsearlier. But in neither case was the analogycarried further; that is, each scholar wascontent to suggest the parallel without ela-borating on the specifics.

The sociocultural context of dialect inMiddle Indic literature is actually morecomplicated than either Hommel or Falken-stein realized. Out of the Old Indic lan-guages, Vedic and Sanskrit, numerous ver-naculars called Prakrits evolved in thecourse of the 1st millennium BC up to theend of the 1st millennium AD. Some of theseMiddle Indic languages eventually de-veloped into the modern Indic languages oftoday. A few of the Prakrits came to beutilized as literary dialects. In so doing,they gradually diverged from the languages

10 Schretter ascribes the observation to Falkenstein, al-though he himself appears to have been acquainted withHommel’s comparison, since he adds to Falkenstein’sreference to “Frauen” in the above quote the phrase “(und

Leute niedrigen Standes),” paraphrasing Hommel’s “die… niederen Beamten und gewöhnlichen Leute wie dieFrauen.”


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on which they were based through an artifi-cial and mechanical application of gram-matical rules divorced from any sense ofpragmatics. In classical Indian dramaSanskrit and certain Prakrits were origin-ally placed in the mouths of different socialgroups as a stylized means of illustratingthe rich variety of dialects actually occur-ring in the various strata of Indian societiesduring this period (see Pischel 1900 for anoverview of the complexity). But veryquickly the choice of dialect became deter-mined by literary convention rather than byany sociocultural reality.

In the classical dramas high-ranking malecharacters, such as the king and thebrahmans, speak and sing Sanskrit, as do asmaller number of elite or well-educatedwomen, such as Buddhist nuns. Womengenerally speak Sauraseni but sing Maha-ra$#ri. A low-ranking brahman clownknown as the vidusaka also speaks Saurase-ni, although he is the friend of the king.11

Low-caste males, such as certain types ofservant and fishermen, speak Magadhi.Clearly, there are some parallels betweenthe way Prakrit and Emesal are used inliterature that was intended to be per-formed.

Let us now come to the question of whatconstitutes women’s language. Since the1970s the volume of academic literature ongender-related language use has mush-roomed dramatically. Most of the interesthas tended to focus on European languagesand societies, but there have been somevery important studies of non-Western so-cieties that have helped to put the subject asa whole into perspective. Linguistic anthro-pology, the field of science dedicated to the

investigation of the cross-cultural phe-nomenon of language, owes much to theAmericanist tradition founded by FranzBoas in the waning years of the nineteenthcentury. An early pathbreaking study intogenderlects was published by Edward Sapirin 1929, documenting the differences be-tween male and female speech in Yana, anIndian language of Northern California.This was followed a couple of decades laterby Mary Haas’ enormously influential, butnow somewhat controversial,12 analysis ofmale and female speech in Koasati/Cou-shatta (1944), an indigenous language ofLouisiana and Texas. More than any other,Haas has inspired the investigation of therelationship of gender to language. Whilestudies of language and gender in Westerncountries involve politically and economi-cally complex societies, most studies of lan-guage use in non-Western cultures, by wayof contrast, concern societies below thestate level of complexity. Important excep-tions are those dealing with the state so-cieties of China and Japan.

Schretter drew on much of the older lit-erature on the relationship of gender to lan-guage in non-Western societies for hismonograph on Emesal. In order to deter-mine whether Emesal may be considered (a)women’s language, i.e., a female gender-lect, the author summarized the findings ofinvestigators from colonial to modern timeswith regard to such phenomena in non-com-plex societies.13 The studies cited are ofwidely varying quality, are often seriouslyout of date, and in some instances sufferfrom a lack of familiarity with modern lin-guistics and anthropology. An irritation isSchretter’s continued use of the phrase

11 The vidusaka is rather reminiscent of the proverbialcharacterization of the ga la: he is a fool and an unwittingsource of comic relief.12 See in particular the debate between Kimball (1987,1990) and Saville-Troike (1988) on the precise nature of

genderlects in Koasati.13 Nevertheless, Schretter (1990: 140), ultimately un-able to answer the question he had set himself, ends hisstudy on an inconclusive note.


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“eine Frauensprache” for what would betterbe termed simply “Frauensprache,” that is,without the indefinite article.

This latter point is no trivial one. While“women’s language” simply denotes thespeech characteristic of women, a universalphenomenon like men’s language,14 “awomen’s language” presupposes the exist-ence of an autonomous system of speechsufficiently differentiated as to qualify as adiscrete language alongside, by implica-tion, a men’s language. Furthermore, it sin-gles out female speech as a special develop-ment in contrast to male speech, the latterbeing taken to be indistinguishable from agiven society’s linguistic norm. This over-looks the fact that in some societies it isfemale speech that is influential and worthyof general emulation, not necessarily malespeech. By way of example, in Gros Ventre(Atsina), an Algonquian language of theNorth American Great Plains with parallelregisters for men and women, younger menare increasingly adopting female forms(Flannery 1946, Taylor 1982). Glück(1979) has argued strongly against the se-ductive notion of discrete women’s lan-guages, and has cast serious doubt on suchclaims in the academic literature.

Thus, while it is legitimate to raise thequestion of the existence, or prior exist-ence, of genderlects (i.e., patterns of femalelanguage vs. male language) in Sumeriansociety, it is not defensible to posit theexistence of ‘a women’s language,’ as if thelanguage of Sumerian women represents aradical departure from a (male) norm. Thelatter seductive and pervasive notion is evi-dent in Schretter’s frequent discussion ofspecific aspects of Emesal phonology asmere departures from an Emegir norm,

rather than as parallel developments along-side those in Emegir, both ultimately froma common Sumerian ancestor. This is anunderstandable temptation, given the statusof Emegir as the dominant dialect, but it isnot linguistically defensible.

Black (1992: 383) has taken Schretter totask for comparing Sumerian developmentswith those in non-state cultures: “Onewould not have thought the complex societyof ancient Sumer comparable to the simplersocieties of e.g. the Chukchi (which seemto be more favourable to the developmentof such women’s languages).”15 This is alittle puzzling. In matter of fact, non-com-plex societies have no greater likelihood ofexhibiting – and no greater claim on – gen-der-related features, or full-blown gender-lects, than complex societies do. A case inpoint is Japan, surely one of the most com-plex societies on the planet. Japanese maleand female speech (for which see Miller1967: 289-90, Shibatani 1990: 371-74, Shi-bamoto 1985) is differentiated, amongother things, in areas of:

(a) phonology: e.g., among a series of vari-ant pronunciations, women say gozamasu,men gozaimasu,

(b) morphology: e.g. women make far moreextensive use of the beautification prefix o-than men do,

(c) the lexicon: e.g. in informal contextswomen use the 1st and 2nd person pronounsatasi and anta respectively, whereas menuse ore and omae, and

(d) syntax: e.g. women delete the copula dabefore the final particle yo.

This is a typical case, comparable in therange of its differentiation with the situ-

14 This is not, however, to say that a gender distinctionalways runs along the lines of a simple male-femaledichotomy.15 Black’s reference to the Chukchi is not coincidental,

but motivated by Diakonoff’s (1975: 114) use of theChukchi model as a parallel to the situation with regardto Emesal.


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ation both in Western and in non-complexsocieties, though not necessarily in the de-gree. Emesal and Emegir exhibit similarfeatures of differentiation, and these havebeen well documented by Schretter. Non-etheless, the question remains as to how weshould interpret these differences in thecase of Sumerian. While there is nothingunusual about the characteristics so farknown, there is still a need to evaluate,and – in part where dubious conclusionshave been drawn too swiftly in the past – toreevaluate, the written contexts in whicheach dialect occurs. I say the written con-texts, since spoken contexts are unexamin-able.16 These written contexts include bothliterary and non-literary, e.g. juridical, con-texts. It is, moreover, essential that the kindof language in which a text is couched becompared with the kind of language used byindividuals and other entities quoted andembedded in the same text. Code-switch-ing, instances of a change in the kind oflanguage used, should be sought and ident-ified within the framework of a single text.

As it now stands, the evidence allows thetentative conclusion that Emesal andEmegir – whatever their basis may havebeen in regional or local dialects – areknown to us in differing contexts: Emesaloccurs only as a literary dialect; that is, asthe vehicle of specific literary and culticgenres and as a literary device employed,

among other things, to identify female spea-kers generically, never individually, in agiven social role. Emegir, on the other hand,has a dual function (1) as the dialect ofstate, society and culture in general and (2)as a literary dialect with respect to specificgenres.

Emesal is, thus, neither a women’s lan-guage nor the language of women.

I would like to end off with a pertinent,but probably apocryphal, anecdote of gen-der-, class-, and fauna-related code-switch-ing at the court of the Holy Roman Em-peror, Charles V (Charles I of Spain). Ac-cording to literary tradition, this thoroughlyEuropean monarch, who was fluent in atleast four languages of state, once pro-claimed that he spoke Spanish to God, Ita-lian to men, French to women, and Germanto horses (Coseriu 1980: 74). In one variantof the tradition he also spoke Flemish, hismother tongue, to the servants. As in theinstance of Middle Indic society, the litera-ry association of individual languages ordialects with specific societal groups instereotypical manner may well parallel thefunction of Emesal with relation to Emegirin Sumerian literature. The reality of theMesopotamian street may have been quitedifferent – but, in the absence of ideal con-ditions for fieldwork among the Sumerians,this question will probably never be fullyresolved or resolvable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONS

AHw = Akkadisches Handwörterbuch.

CAD = The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

CDA = A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian.

16 I deliberately exclude instances where direct speechis recorded in a cuneiform text, since this occurs in awritten context, not in the spoken context of a taped

session. Although quotations may well reflect spokenlanguage, they need not, and they must be regarded asfeatures of literature in its broadest sense.


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Whittaker - Linguistic Anthropology and Emesal