As in Hebrew the per sonal pronouns exist in two forms : the longer is used as a nom inative and is a separate word, the shorter is attached to verbs as an accusative and (in a slightly different form) to nouns as a possessive. These suffixes give rise to less change in the vowels of the words to which they are attached than in Hebrew. The relative pronoun is d (i.e., d followed by the shortest kind of vowel), which is prefixed to words.
There are two numbers, sing. and pl., and two genders, masc. and fern. Syriac, like all Aramaic dialects, has no definite article, but the noun has three "states"—absolute, construct, emphatic, e.g., resh, "head," "a head"; resh "the-head-of (the-king)"; rested, "the-head." But in Syriac the emphatic state (resha) has almost superseded the simple "abso lute," which is hardly used except for adjectival or participial predicates and in certain stock phrases. The construct, which, as in Hebrew, must be immediately followed by a genitive, is less used than in Hebrew, except as the form on which to hang the possessive suffixes. In its place the relative participle d is used; in place of resh malkei ("the-head-of the-king") we find resha dmalkd, i.e., "the-head which-the-king (-has)," or resheh dmalka, i.e., "his head which (-is)-the king." Here the d is practically equivalent to our "of." This genitive (with prefixed d), does not require the governing noun to precede it immediately, as must be the case with the construct : in this and many respects Syriac has gained greater flexibility in syntax than Hebrew.
The fem. sing. ending is (absolute), -a0 (construct),
or
(emph.) : thus the fern. sing. abs. is always identical in form with the masc. sing. emph. The plural endings are: masc. abs.
-in, const. -ai, emph. -e; fern. abs. const. d0 emph. -a0a.
The most notable peculiarity of Syriac as compared with other Aramaic dialects, and indeed other Semitic languages generally, is that the prefix to the imperfect is n, not y, e.g., "he will write" is nexto(3, not
this is likely to have been originally a mere local peculiarity of the speech of Edessa. The Syriac verb has lost the original passive forms still surviving in Arabic, and in their place uses reflexive forms, with prefixed e0- and a change in the last vowel. The simple active kea0 makes its passive eekOef3; the intensive katte0 makes eekattaf3; and the causative axtei3 makes ettaxtaf3. (Note the changes made in the
b g d k p t letters caused by the presence or absence of a preceding vowel.) In Syriac the verbs have become real tenses, partly with the help of the auxiliary (h)wa, a truncated form of hwa ("was"). Thus we get Pres. WO, "he writes," "he is writing" ; Impf. kdee0 wd, "he was writing"; Fut. nextd(3, "he will write" ; Subj. dnextoi3, "that he may write"; Aor. or Perf. keat3, "he wrote," "he has written"; Plupf. keal3 wa, "he had written"—sometimes also used for simple Aorist.
Syriac uses a great many con junctions, many of them adapted from Greek. Thus we have ger from -yap, den from 4 (or at least used like Greek 4), even man from µb). The order of words which is permissible is also very free, more so than in any other Semitic language, a fact which gives to Syriac great flexibility and also renders word-for word translation into it easier.
In some Syriac translations from the Greek, notably the later Jacobite translations of the Bible and other Greek theological works, Greek idiom is very slavishly followed. This, however, is to be regarded rather as learned pedantry than as linguistic evo lution. In other works, e.g., the Syriac version of Pseudo Callisthenes Life of Alexander, which was translated not from the original Greek but from a Pahlavi text, the influence of the Per sian idiom is quite perceptible in the syntax.
is the name given to a litera ture written not in "classical Syriac," but in the vernacular dialect of Palestine. It is exclusively theological (Bible, Homilies, Cyril's Catecheses, etc.), and appears to date from the 5th or 6th cen turies when certain emperors, notably Justinian, made belated efforts to evangelize the non-Greek-speaking populations of Pal estine. The documents are written in a peculiar script. The language is very similar to the Jewish Targums and to some Aramaic parts of the Talmud : unfortunately the linguistic value of this literature is greatly diminished by the fact that it wholly consists of translations from the Greek and follows the Greek idioms with painful literalness.
Noldeke, Compendious Syriac Grammar, Eng. trans. by J. A. Crichton (19o4). For "Palestinian Syriac," see F. C. Burkitt, J. Theol. Studies, vol. ii., pp. 174-185 ; vol. xxiv., pp. 415-424. (F. C. B.)