Sumerian

Sumerian is a term used to describe a person or object from the ancient kingdom of Sumeria. Sumerian was written and spoken on cuneiform, which is a tablet of dried mud and manure. The organic material in the manure has proved a boon, as it allows us to carbon date Sumerian cuneiform tablets. Sumerian is known for its unique syntactic features, which include an object-object-verb-subject word order and the use of the morpheme p before inanimate nouns and non-gendered substantives. It also has a tendency to employ left dislocations, in much the same way that some American Indian languages do.