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54-507: In ancient times, Elamites governed the Lorestan mountains and constructed several strong buildings. Darreh-Shahr was the first Elamite city attacked and destroyed by Assyrians , with its people massacred. In Seymareh Valley, the remains of Sassanid monuments are still present, hence Dareh-Shahr might have been a thriving city in the Sassanid and Parthian eras. Furthermore, foreign experts call

108-424: A corpus of literature or liturgy that remained in widespread use (see corpus language ), as is the case with Old English or Old High German relative to their contemporary descendants, English and German. Some degree of misunderstanding can result from designating languages such as Old English and Old High German as extinct, or Latin dead, while ignoring their evolution as a language or as many languages. This

162-434: A vernacular language . The revival of Hebrew has been largely successful due to extraordinarily favourable conditions, notably the creation of a nation state (modern Israel in 1948) in which it became the official language, as well as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda 's extreme dedication to the revival of the language, by creating new words for the modern terms Hebrew lacked. Revival attempts for minor extinct languages with no status as

216-616: A different one. For example, many Native American languages were replaced by Dutch , English , French , Portuguese , or Spanish as a result of European colonization of the Americas . In contrast to an extinct language, which no longer has any speakers, or any written use, a historical language may remain in use as a literary or liturgical language long after it ceases to be spoken natively. Such languages are sometimes also referred to as "dead languages", but more typically as classical languages . The most prominent Western example of such

270-743: A kind of Suffixaufnahme in that the nominal class markers of the head are also attached to any modifiers, including adjectives, noun adjuncts , possessor nouns and even entire clauses. The history of Elamite is periodised as follows: Middle Elamite is considered the “classical” period of Elamite, but the best attested variety is Achaemenid Elamite, which was widely used by the Achaemenid Persian state for official inscriptions as well as administrative records and displays significant Old Persian influence. Persepolis Administrative Archives were found at Persepolis in 1930s, and they are mostly in Elamite;

324-452: A language is Latin , and comparable cases are found throughout world history due to the universal tendency to retain a historical stage of a language as the liturgical language . In a view that prioritizes written representation over natural language acquisition and evolution, historical languages with living descendants that have undergone significant language change may be considered "extinct", especially in cases where they did not leave

378-504: A liturgical language typically have more modest results. The Cornish language revival has proven at least partially successful: after a century of effort there are 3,500 claimed native speakers, enough for UNESCO to change its classification from "extinct" to "critically endangered". A Livonian language revival movement to promote the use of the Livonian language has managed to train a few hundred people to have some knowledge of it. This

432-567: A meaning of anteriority (perfect and pluperfect tense). The negative particle is in- ; it takes nominal class suffixes that agree with the subject of attention (which may or may not coincide with the grammatical subject): first-person singular in-ki , third-person singular animate in-ri , third-person singular inanimate in-ni / in-me . In Achaemenid Elamite, the inanimate form in-ni has been generalized to all persons, and concord has been lost. Nominal heads are normally followed by their modifiers, but there are occasional inversions. Word order

486-508: A new generation of native speakers. The optimistic neologism " sleeping beauty languages" has been used to express such a hope, though scholars usually refer to such languages as dormant. In practice, this has only happened on a large scale successfully once: the revival of the Hebrew language . Hebrew had survived for millennia since the Babylonian exile as a liturgical language, but not as

540-403: A nominalizing suffix and indicate nomen agentis or just members of a class. The inanimate third-person singular suffix -me forms abstracts. Some examples of the use of the noun class suffixes above are the following: Modifiers follow their (nominal) heads. In noun phrases and pronoun phrases, the suffixes referring to the head are appended to the modifier, regardless of whether the modifier

594-470: A non-past infinitive. The corresponding conjugations ( conjugation II and III ) are: In Achaemenid Elamite, the Conjugation 2 endings are somewhat changed: There is also a periphrastic construction with an auxiliary verb ma- following either Conjugation II and III stems (i.e. the perfective and imperfective participles), or nomina agentis in -r , or a verb base directly. In Achaemenid Elamite, only

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648-417: A process of revitalisation . Languages that have first-language speakers are known as modern or living languages to contrast them with dead languages, especially in educational contexts. Languages have typically become extinct as a result of the process of cultural assimilation leading to language shift , and the gradual abandonment of a native language in favor of a foreign lingua franca . As of

702-416: A substantial trace as a substrate in the language that replaces it. There have, however, also been cases where the language of higher prestige did not displace the native language but left a superstrate influence. The French language for example shows evidence both of a Celtic substrate and a Frankish superstrate. Institutions such as the education system, as well as (often global) forms of media such as

756-534: A transition between Middle and Achaemenid Elamite, with respect to language structure. The Elamite language may have remained in widespread use after the Achaemenid period. Several rulers of Elymais bore the Elamite name Kamnaskires in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. The Acts of the Apostles (c. 80–90 AD) mentions the language as if it was still current. There are no later direct references, but Elamite may be

810-464: A verbal noun, or “infinitive”. The verb distinguishes three forms functioning as finite verbs , known as “conjugations” . Conjugation I is the only one with special endings characteristic of finite verbs as such, as shown below. Its use is mostly associated with active voice, transitivity (or verbs of motion), neutral aspect and past tense meaning. Conjugations II and III can be regarded as periphrastic constructions with participles; they are formed by

864-638: Is subject–object–verb (SOV), with indirect objects preceding direct objects, but it becomes more flexible in Achaemenid Elamite. There are often resumptive pronouns before the verb – often long sequences, especially in Middle Elamite ( ap u in duni-h "to-them I it gave"). The language uses postpositions such as -ma "in" and -na "of", but spatial and temporal relationships are generally expressed in Middle Elamite by means of "directional words" originating as nouns or verbs. They can precede or follow

918-452: Is a language with no living descendants that no longer has any first-language or second-language speakers. In contrast, a dead language is a language that no longer has any first-language speakers, but does have second-language speakers or is used fluently in written form, such as Latin . A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group ; these languages are often undergoing

972-446: Is another noun (such as a possessor) or an adjective. Sometimes the suffix is preserved on the head as well: This system, in which the noun class suffixes function as derivational morphemes as well as agreement markers and indirectly as subordinating morphemes, is best seen in Middle Elamite. It was, to a great extent, broken down in Achaemenid Elamite, where possession and, sometimes, attributive relationships are uniformly expressed with

1026-658: Is expressed in the apparent paradox "Latin is a dead language, but Latin never died." A language such as Etruscan , for example, can be said to be both extinct and dead: inscriptions are ill understood even by the most knowledgeable scholars, and the language ceased to be used in any form long ago, so that there have been no speakers, native or non-native, for many centuries. In contrast, Old English, Old High German and Latin never ceased evolving as living languages, thus they did not become extinct as Etruscan did. Through time Latin underwent both common and divergent changes in phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, and continues today as

1080-836: Is uncommon in Middle Elamite, but gradually becomes dominant at the expense of the nominal class suffix construction in Achaemenid Elamite. Middle Elamite (Šutruk-Nahhunte I, 1200–1160 BC; EKI 18, IRS 33): Transliteration: (1) ú šu-ut-ru-uk- nah-hu-un-te ša-ak hal-lu-du-uš- in-šu-ši- (2) -na-ak-gi-ik su-un-ki-ik an-za-an šu-šu-un-ka 4 e-ri-en- (3) -tu 4 -um ti-pu-uh a-ak hi-ya-an in-šu-ši-na-ak na-pír (4) ú-ri-me a-ha-an ha-li-ih-ma hu-ut-tak ha-li-ku-me (5) in-šu-ši-na-ak na-pír ú-ri in li-na te-la-ak-ni Transcription: U Šutruk-Nahhunte, šak Halluduš-Inšušinak-(i)k, sunki-k Anzan Šušun-k(a). Erientum tipu-h ak hiya-n Inšušinak nap-(i)r u-r(i)-me ahan hali-h-ma. hutta-k hali-k u-me Inšušinak nap-(i)r u-r(i) in lina tela-k-ni. Translation: Extinct language An extinct language

1134-526: Is usually considered a language isolate . The lack of established relatives makes its interpretation difficult. A sizeable number of Elamite lexemes are known from the Achaemenid royal inscriptions – trilingual inscriptions of the Achaemenid Empire , in which Elamite was written using Elamite cuneiform (circa 5th century BC), which is fully deciphered. An important dictionary of the Elamite language,

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1188-464: The Elamisches Wörterbuch was published in 1987 by W. Hinz and H. Koch. The Linear Elamite script however, one of the scripts used to write the Elamite language circa 2000 BC, has remained elusive until recently. The following scripts are known or assumed to have encoded Elamite: Later, Elamite cuneiform , adapted from Akkadian cuneiform , was used from c. 2500 on. Elamite cuneiform

1242-543: The Xūz language was written circa 988 AD by Al-Muqaddasi , characterizing the Khuzi as bilingual in Arabic and Persian but also speaking an "incomprehensible" language at the town of Ramhormoz . The town had recently become prosperous again after the foundation of a market, and as it received an influx of foreigners and being a "Khuzi" was stigmatized at the time, the language probably died in

1296-497: The "kill the Indian, save the man" policy of American Indian boarding schools and other measures was to prevent Native Americans from transmitting their native language to the next generation and to punish children who spoke the language of their culture of origin. The French vergonha policy likewise had the aim of eradicating minority languages. Language revival is the attempt to re-introduce an extinct language in everyday use by

1350-439: The 11th century. Later authors only mention the language when citing previous work. Because of the limitations of the language's scripts, its phonology is not well understood. Its consonants included at least stops /p/ , /t/ and /k/ , sibilants /s/ , /ʃ/ and /z/ (with an uncertain pronunciation), nasals /m/ and /n/ , liquids /l/ and /r/ and fricative /h/ , which was lost in late Neo-Elamite. Some peculiarities of

1404-405: The 2000s, a total of roughly 7,000 natively spoken languages existed worldwide. Most of these are minor languages in danger of extinction; one estimate published in 2004 expected that some 90% of the currently spoken languages will have become extinct by 2050. Normally the transition from a spoken to an extinct language occurs when a language undergoes language death by being directly replaced by

1458-463: The Internet, television, and print media play a significant role in the process of language loss. For example, when people migrate to a new country, their children attend school in the country, and the schools are likely to teach them in the majority language of the country rather than their parents' native language. Language death can also be the explicit goal of government policy. For example, part of

1512-405: The addition of the nominal personal class suffixes to a passive perfective participle in -k and to an active imperfective participle in -n , respectively. Accordingly, conjugation II expresses a perfective aspect , hence usually past tense, and an intransitive or passive voice, whereas conjugation III expresses an imperfective non-past action. The Middle Elamite conjugation I is formed with

1566-422: The area of this national heritage site has reduced from 200 to 60 hectares (490 to 150 acres) due to farming activities in the region. So far, agricultural activities have damaged a large amount of historical evidence and resulted in the destruction of a large number of historical buildings. Currently, farmers who have occupied the lands do not have title deeds. Also, since there was no supervision over these lands in

1620-553: The attention of Iranian and foreign archeologists in recent years. In 2006, eleven rare objects dating back to 2800 BC were illegally unearthed from Dareh-Shahr. These included metal items such as arrows with designs, metals depicting wild goats, a golden cup and a unique and precious silver mask, which is estimated to be from the first millennium BC. Fortunately, this collection was seized in Tehran from an illegal digger in April of that year and

1674-496: The construction with the noun class suffixes. Nevertheless, a set of separate third-person animate possessives -e (sing.) / appi-e (plur.) is occasionally used already in Middle Elamite: puhu-e “her children”, hiš-api-e “their name”. The relative pronouns are akka “who” and appa “what, which”. The verb base can be simple ( ta- “put”) or “ reduplicated ” ( beti > bepti “rebel”). The pure verb base can function as

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1728-491: The dominant lingua francas of world commerce: English, Mandarin Chinese , Spanish, and French. In their study of contact-induced language change, American linguists Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman (1991) stated that in situations of cultural pressure (where populations are forced to speak a dominant language), three linguistic outcomes may occur: first – and most commonly – a subordinate population may shift abruptly to

1782-453: The dominant language, leaving the native language to a sudden linguistic death. Second, the more gradual process of language death may occur over several generations. The third and most rare outcome is for the pressured group to maintain as much of its native language as possible, while borrowing elements of the dominant language's grammar (replacing all, or portions of, the grammar of the original language). A now disappeared language may leave

1836-482: The following suffixes: In Achaemenid Elamite, the loss of the /h/ reduces the transparency of the Conjugation I endings and leads to the merger of the singular and plural except in the first person; in addition, the first-person plural changes from -hu to -ut . The participles can be exemplified as follows: perfective participle hutta-k “done”, kulla-k “something prayed”, i.e. “a prayer”; imperfective participle hutta-n “doing” or “who will do”, also serving as

1890-514: The governed nouns and tend to exhibit noun class agreement with whatever noun is described by the prepositional phrase: i-r pat-r u-r ta-t-ni "may you place him under me", lit. "him inferior of-me place-you-may". In Achaemenid Elamite, postpositions become more common and partly displace that type of construction. A common conjunction is ak "and, or". Achaemenid Elamite also uses a number of subordinating conjunctions such as anka "if, when" and sap "as, when". Subordinate clauses usually precede

1944-455: The imperative. The prohibitative is formed by the particle anu/ani preceding Conjugation III. Verbal forms can be converted into the heads of subordinate clauses through the addition of the nominalising suffix -a , much as in Sumerian : siyan in-me kuši-hš(i)-me-a “the temple which they did not build”. -ti / -ta can be suffixed to verbs, chiefly of conjugation I, expressing possibly

1998-548: The language in question must be conceptualized as frozen in time at a particular state of its history. This is accomplished by periodizing English and German as Old; for Latin, an apt clarifying adjective is Classical, which also normally includes designation of high or formal register . Minor languages are endangered mostly due to economic and cultural globalization , cultural assimilation, and development. With increasing economic integration on national and regional scales, people find it easier to communicate and conduct business in

2052-688: The local language in which, according to the Talmud , the Book of Esther was recited annually to the Jews of Susa in the Sasanian period (224–642 AD). Between the 8th and 13th centuries AD, various Arabic authors refer to a language called Khuzi or Xūz spoken in Khuzistan , which was unlike any other Iranian language known to those writers. It is possible that it was "a late variant of Elamite". The last original report on

2106-420: The native language of hundreds of millions of people, renamed as different Romance languages and dialects (French, Italian, Spanish, Corsican , Asturian , Ladin , etc.). Similarly, Old English and Old High German never died, but developed into various forms of modern English and German, as well as other related tongues still spoken (e.g. Scots from Old English and Yiddish from Old High German). With regard to

2160-448: The past few decades, a large area of this territory have been occupied and cultivated by local farmers. Elamite Elamite , also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Scythic , Median , Amardian , Anshanian and Susian , is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites . It was recorded in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite is generally thought to have no demonstrable relatives and

2214-445: The quality and flexibility of stucco, were able to create them because of the lack of stucco firmness. In 2000, 50-day operations were launched by a team of archeologists. Excavations were aimed at shedding light on the unknown features and historical background of the ancient area. Unearthed remains of a city structure, including residential quarters, passages, stables, market place, public bath and modern sewage system, have attracted

Darreh Shahr Ancient City - Misplaced Pages Continue

2268-518: The remains of more than 10,000 of these cuneiform documents have been uncovered. In comparison, Aramaic is represented by only 1,000 or so original records. These documents represent administrative activity and flow of data in Persepolis over more than fifty consecutive years (509 to 457 BC). Documents from the Old Elamite and early Neo-Elamite stages are rather scarce. Neo-Elamite can be regarded as

2322-513: The ruins of Dareh-Shahr, which belong to the Sassanid era, there are the vestiges of crosses, arches, ceilings, dome-shaped ceilings, alleys, and passages with urban development characteristics of that time. All the buildings of Dareh-Shahr are built from abraded stones and gypsum. The abundance of gypsum in Seymareh Valley and the simplicity of working with it led to their use in the Sassanid architecture. Coins discovered in this area belong to

2376-776: The rule of Khosrow III and his successors. Located in the south of Dareh-Shahr, at the beginning of a gorge of the same name on the outskirts of Kabir Kuh , is an ancient bridge called Gavmishan with 3 arches that were repaired in 2008. Each of its arches is at an interval of 5.5 metres (18 ft). Archeological excavations of the 1990s in Dareh-Shahr revealed a significant number of stucco surfaces and pieces which, in terms of diversity, finesse and aesthetics, are unique and unparalleled. The stucco patterns in this region are diverse and bear detailed decorations. The shapes are geometric with plant motifs. The stucco works are in geometrical shapes (triangular, round, square and rectangular) and

2430-461: The spelling have been interpreted as suggesting that there was a contrast between two series of stops ( /p/ , /t/ , /k/ as opposed to /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ ), but in general, such a distinction was not consistently indicated by written Elamite. Elamite had at least the vowels /a/ , /i/ , and /u/ and may also have had /e/ , which was not generally expressed unambiguously. Roots were generally CV, (C)VC, (C)VCV or, more rarely, CVCCV (the first C

2484-438: The surfaces are solid. All the pieces have backgrounds and margins. The marginal shapes are in the form of Greek chains, rope-like texture and consecutive sevens, upside-down patterns and consecutive ‘S’ shapes. Patterns in the center include lilies and 6- or 8-leaf flowers with a central circle, pomegranate, palm leaf and clusters combined in a beautiful composition. This image reveals the imaginative power of artists who, given

2538-430: The third option exists. There is no consensus on the exact meaning of the periphrastic forms with ma- , but durative, intensive or volitional interpretations have been suggested. The optative is expressed by the addition of the suffix -ni to Conjugations I and II. The imperative is identical to the second person of Conjugation I in Middle Elamite. In Achaemenid Elamite, it is the third person that coincides with

2592-462: The unearthed city as the second and lost capital of the Soloukis , while some Iranian archeologists believe the monuments are part of the state of Shirvan . Some resources and texts link Dareh-Shahr to Mehr Jaan Ghazagh, Saabzaan, Seymareh, or the city of Khosrow Parviz in the late Sassanid period, which was completely flattened by earthquakes in 248 and 344 AH (circa 862 and 955 AD respectively). In

2646-404: The verb of the main clause. In Middle Elamite, the most common way to construct a relative clause is to attach a nominal class suffix to the clause-final verb, optionally followed by the relativizing suffix -a : thus, lika-me i-r hani-š-r(i) "whose reign he loves", or optionally lika-me i-r hani-š-r-a . The alternative construction by means of the relative pronouns akka "who" and appa "which"

2700-487: The written language, skills in reading or writing Etruscan are all but non-existent, but trained people can understand and write Old English, Old High German, and Latin. Latin differs from the Germanic counterparts in that an approximation of its ancient form is still employed to some extent liturgically. This last observation illustrates that for Latin, Old English, or Old High German to be described accurately as dead or extinct,

2754-480: The “ genitive case ” suffix -na appended to the modifier: e.g. šak X-na “son of X”. The suffix -na , which probably originated from the inanimate agreement suffix -n followed by the nominalizing particle -a (see below), appeared already in Neo-Elamite. The personal pronouns distinguish nominative and accusative case forms. They are as follows: In general, no special possessive pronouns are needed in view of

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2808-566: Was largely a syllabary of some 130 glyphs at any one time and retained only a few logograms from Akkadian but, over time, the number of logograms increased. The complete corpus of Elamite cuneiform consists of about 20,000 tablets and fragments. The majority belong to the Achaemenid era, and contain primarily economic records. Elamite is an agglutinative language , and its grammar was characterized by an extensive and pervasive nominal class system. Animate nouns have separate markers for first, second and third person. It can be said to display

2862-549: Was transferred to the Cultural Heritage Police Department . In 2007, the continuation of agricultural activities in the vicinity of the national heritage site of Dareh-Shahr threatened this historical city. According to Behzad Faryadian, the head of Seymareh Cultural Heritage Department, Dareh-Shahr was registered as the tenth cultural heritage site on the National Heritage List in 1932. However,

2916-580: Was usually a nasal). Elamite is agglutinative but with fewer morphemes per word than, for example, Sumerian or Hurrian and Urartian . It is mostly suffixing. The Elamite nominal system is thoroughly pervaded by a noun class distinction, which combines a gender distinction between animate and inanimate with a personal class distinction, corresponding to the three persons of verbal inflection (first, second, third, plural). The suffixes that express that system are as follows: Animate: Inanimate: The animate third-person suffix -r can serve as

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