What are they talking about? Sumerian and Emesal between Everyday Life and Sacrality

Discussions that seek to determine a distinction between "sacred language" and " secular language" frequently make use of both verbal and non- verbal evidence. But what seems obvious for present-day observations is not necessarily applicable to languages that have survived in a purely written form. While the Sumerian language variety Emesal can be characterized as sacred language with no difficulty, " normal" Sumerian, which was used to write literary and everyday- life texts in Southern Mesopotamia until the 20th cent. BCE needs more detailed consideration. Though it appears simple to distinguish texts of everyday- life from literary texts, it is less simple to track down the " sacred nature" in these literary texts. Since archaeological and speech contexts are oftenwanting, the non- verbal evidence will be left aside in the course of this paper, while strictly linguistic parameters will be followed instead. The paper starts with a general discussion of " sacred language". It then focuses on two text examples for which the parameters " participants", " content and register" and " setting" are tested for their validity to extract the " sacred nature" in the use of the Sumerian language. The paper ends with a brief discussion of the language variety Emesal.