Page:Compendious Syriac Grammar.djvu/45

§§ 7. 8. "in him"; qe̊ṭaltāh "thou hast killed her"; and so also  qe̊δāmēh "before her";  neqṭe̊līh "he is slaying her" (Impf.), &c.

In the latter case this system has already in part given up the exact, and relatively phonetic significance of the 'points'. That significance, however, came to be abandoned in many other cases besides, as when, for instance, one began to write sām "he placed", because it is a Perfect like  qe̊ṭal. Other considerations too mixed themselves up with the matter; thus it became the practice to write the 1st pers. sing. perf. with &#9676;̇ over the first consonant, e. g. qeṭleth "I killed". The points, upper and under,—particularly the former,—are often wrongly placed; thus is found for  ʿāveδ "does", and  for  sāleq "ascends".

§ 7. Farther, a second or third point was often added to distinguish more exactly between verbal forms in particular; for example, there was written ʿevdeth,  or (East-Syrian)  ʿevdath "she did";  manū "who is?" compared with mānau "what is?";  be̊rē "" as distinguished from  be̊rā "" and  bārē "", &c. This complicated system, often fluctuating according to districts and schools, and seldom faithfully attended to by copyists, still maintained a footing in many forms, even alongside of the employment of a more exact indication of the vowels.

§ 8. Out of this punctuation then, there was formed, with the Nestorians first of all, a complete system of Vowel-Signs. To be sure it never attained to perfect consistency and universal acceptance: even the appellations of the vowels fluctuate a good deal. The system is used in Nestorian impressions, on the authority of good manuscripts, after the following scheme:—