抄録
A. Falkenstein analyzed a Sumerian verbal prefix “ba-” into two elements, “b-” and “-a-”, and he looked upon the latter as a locative-terminative infix. In any actual cases, however, we often find it contextually difficult to recognize such a function of “(b) a-”. Thus it may be desirable to regard it as a medio-passive prefix, as F. Thureau-Dangin and St. Langdon etc. have pointed out. But we can possibly gain a better understanding of the medio-passive function of “ba-”, when we analyze it into the two morpheme “b-” and “-a-” with due consideration to another verbal prefix “bí-”, and regard the morpheme “-a-”, not as a corresponding element of the nominal suffix “-a”, but as a reflexive or dative infix -a-, which is educed from the verbal prefix ma- (<*mu-a-) and infix -na- (<*-n-a). The passive function of “ba-” has developed from this reflexive or middle form.
