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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SUS-TAV |
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SYRIAC LANGUAGE . Syriac is the eastern dialect of the Aramaic language which, during the early centuries of the Christian era, prevailed in Mesopotamia and the adjoining regions. Its main centres were at Edessa and Nisibis, but it was the literary language of practically all the Christian writers in the region east of Antioch, as well as of the Christian subjects of the Persian empire. All the Semitic languages' are built up from triliteral roots: that is, the great majority of the words are derived from a simple verbal form, of which the essential elements are three consonants. This form is seen in the 3rd pers. sing. perf. of the verb, e.g. Aram. q`tal or Pal (" he killed "), which corresponds to Heb. gatal and Arab. gatala. The vowels play no part in differentiating the roots, for the vowels are practically the same in the corresponding forms of every root. The form q`tal illustrates one main peculiarity of Aramaic, as opposed to the other Semitic languages, viz. its paucity of vowels: for where Hebrew has two full vowelsa long and a short in Mal, and Arabic has three short vowels in gatala, Aramaic has only one short vowel, the sound ` between q and t being merely a half vowel which is not indicated in Syriac writing. Another chief
' On the place of Aramaic among the Semitic languages, and of Syriac among the various dialects, see SEMITIC LANGUAGES. making the so-called " emphatic " state. In the older Aramaic dialects this is used exactly as the noun with prefixed article is used in other languages; but in Syriac the emphatic state has lost this special
When, in the nth century A.D., owing to theological differences the Syriac-using Christians became divided into Nestorians or East Syrians and Jacobites (Monophysites) or West Syrians, certain differences of pronunciation, chiefly in the vowels, began to develop themselves. The East Syrians in most cases kept the more primitive pronunciation: e.g. the old Semitic a with them remained a, but with the Jacobites passed into o. One very tangible difference appears in the fact that the name Jesus was by the East Syrians written and pronounced Isho`, by the West Syrians Yeshu. The Syriac alphabet, which derived its letters from forms ultimately akin to those of the Old Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets, has the same twenty-two 4etters as the Hebrew. And as in Hebrew, the six letters b g d k p t are aspirated when immediately preceded by any vowel sound. On the other hand, the guttural letters affect the vowels much less than in Hebrew: their chief
scheme is the more satisfactory, though more cumbrous.Where the same root exists in Arabic, Syriac and Hebrew, its fundamental consonants are usually the same in all three languages. But letters belonging to the same group occasionally interchange. As regards the dentals and sibilants there are one or two rules which govern the interchange, in the manner of a Grimm's Law. (1) Where Arabic has an ordinary dental, Syriac and Hebrew have the same; but where Arabic has an aspirated dental (e.g. th), Syriac has an ordinary dental t, but Hebrew has a sibilant (sh). (2) Hebrew has one more sibilant than Arabic or Syriac: thus, as corresponding to s (samekh), s (sin) sh in Hebrew, Arabic has only s (sin) sh, while Syriac has a different pair s (samekh) sh. Hebrew samekh is represented by Ar. sin and Syr. samekh; but Heb. sin (Syr. samekh) is represented by Ar. sh, while Heb. and Syr. sh is represented by Ar. sin. As regards this crossing of s and sh, Arabic has with it the other south Semitic language, Ethiopic: the evidence as to the other north Semitic language, Assyrian, is conflicting.In vowel-sounds Syriac is clearly more primitive than Hebrew (as pointed by the Massoretes), less so than Arabic. Thus Ar. and Syr. a is often thinned in Hebrew into i (e when accented), as in the first syllable of Ar. gattala=Syr. gaga a--Heb. qittel. But the second syllable of the same word shows Syriac siding with Hebrew against Arabic. Again the primitive a of Arabic is in the older (Nestorian) pronunciation of Syriac maintained, while in Jacobite Syriac and in Hebrew it passes into o: thus Ar. gatil Nestorian VW .= Jacobite and Hebrew gotel. Again Syriac i It may indeed be remarked that Syriac, which is generally more primitive in its sounds than Hebrew, shows a more advanced stage of weakening as regards the gutturals: thus in a good many forms it has substituted (Lief for initial he, and often shows a dislike for the presence of two gutturals in the same word, weakening one of them to clef. A much more advanced stage of weakening is seen in some of the other dialects. 2 With regard to this, Syriac has one great difference from Hebrew, viz, that final a is indicated not by he, but by clef.maintains the diphthongs ai and au, which in Hebrew have usually passed into e and 5. The accent
A few words may now be said about the three main parts of speechpronouns, nouns and verbs. r. Pronouns.As in the other Semitic languages, these stand almost entirely outside the system of triliteral roots, being mainly derived from certain demonstrative
Demonstrative
letter d (indeclinable) prefixed to words.2. Nouns and Adjectives.The Syriac noun has three statesthe absolute (used chiefly in adjectival or participial predicates, but also with numerals and negatives, in adverbial phrases, &c.), the construct (which, as in Hebrew, must be immediately followed by a genitive), and the emphatic (see above). There are only two genders and two numbers: the neuter gender is entirely wanting, and the dual number is not recognized in Syriac grammar, though there are plain traces of it in the language. The fem. sing. ending is absolute a, construct ath, emphatic to or 'Ma: thus the fern. sing. abs. is always identical in form with the masc. sing. emph. The plural endings aremasc. abs. in, const. ai, emph. e; fern. abs. an, const. ath, emph. alha. Syriac is not, like Arabic and Hebrew, confined to the use of the construct for the ordinary expression of the genitive or possessive relation: for it has a pre-position (d) which expresses ' of," " belonging to." The noun preceding this preposition may be in the emphatic state or may (as is usually the case when the noun is definite) have a pleonastic suffix. Thus " the son of the king " is more commonly expressed by b'ra dh'malka or b'reh d'malka than by bar mania, whereas the latter type would alone be permissible in Hebrew. And a genitive with prefixed d does not require the governing noun to precede it immediately, as must be the case when the construct is used. This is one of the many respects where Syriac has gained greater flexibility in syntax than Hebrew. 3. Verbs.The Syriac verb is remarkable for having entirely lost the original
auxiliary
Pres. Oki, " he kills," " he is killing " (sometimes " he is about to kill "). Impf. gatel wa, " he was killing." Fut. negtol, " he will kill." Pf. or Aor. q'tal " he has killed," " he killed." Plup. or Aor. q'tal wa, " he had killed," " he killed." The same progress towards flexibility in syntax is seen in the copious supply of conjunctions possessed by Syriac. No doubt the tendency towards a more flowing construction of sentences was helped by the influence of Greek, which has also supplied a large stock of words to the Syriac vocabulary. (N. M.)End of Article: SYRIAC LANGUAGE If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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