HistLing: Piotr Michalowski: Changing a dead language: the standardization of Sumerian

Changing a dead language: the standardization of Sumerian

This week in HistLing, Professor Piotr Michalowski, a Sumerologist in UM's Near Eastern Studies Department, will give a presentation on "Changing a Dead Language: the standardization of Sumerian". He proposes combining the analysis of a logo-syllabic script with morphology, arguing that the standardization of writing was at the same time a standardization of a dead language that resulted in a new form of that language.