Hello, could you help me detect when cuneiform symbols complete a word, in a literary text for example? Because the symbols are printed on the clay tablet without spaces between words. How do you identify the end of one word and the beginning of another?
Hello! The short answer is that you can identify where words in Sumerian cuneiform begin and end with context only. So, for example, telling whether a pair of signs is ki la "to grovel, heed, excavate" or kila "weight, excavation, cellar, water meter" would depend on the surrounding signs and where in a line the signs are placed. One useful trick is that the main verb of a sentence always comes at the end - so if you can identify that verb (by a line break, its conjugation signs, etc) you can sometimes work backwards to piece together which signs go together and which do not.
The longer answer is, "what is a word? where do words begin and end?" is an ongoing and contentious question across linguistics and among scholars of many languages, including cuneiform languages. We don't know how, precisely, Sumerian speakers conceived of where the "words" of their language began and ended. So what constitutes an attached word, rather than a separate particle, is largely a modern convention rather than a reflection of some ancient concept of "word"-ness.
If you want to know a common standard for dividing up words in Sumerian, I recommend this article on the ETCSL's hyphenation policy, which, by extension, also covers when not to hyphenate (i.e. when to separate words). I hope that's helpful!
