Sumerian language
Gender

The two genders have been variously called animate and inanimate, human and non-human, or personal/person and impersonal/non-person. Their assignment is semantically predictable: the first gender includes humans and gods, while the second one includes animals, plants, non-living objects, abstract concepts, and groups of humans. Since the second gender includes animals, the use of the terms animate and inanimate is somewhat misleading and conventional, but it is most common in the literature, so it will be maintained in this article.

There are some minor deviations from the gender assignment rules, for example:

1. The word for 𒀩 alan "statue" may be treated as animate.

2. Words for slaves such as 𒊩𒆳 geme "slave woman" and 𒊕 sag̃ "head", used in its secondary sense of "slave", may be treated as inanimate.

3. In fable -like contexts, which occur frequently in Sumerian proverbs, animals are usually treated as animate.
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