Page:Compendious Syriac Grammar.djvu/68

Rh "are kings" (sing. ), &c. Then in Syriac even the sheva mobile has often quite disappeared, as we are able in part to establish, even for very early times, through the relations of Rukkākhā and Quššāyā (§ 23 D): compare also the treatment of originally doubled consonants (§ 21 B).

B. A sharpened syllable does not count for an open one, even when the double-consonant is itself simplified (§ 21 A, B). Thus the short vowel remains, with resulting hardness, in (rabbī, West-Syrian rabī) "brought up";  "interest";  (maḥḥem) "heats";  (quṭṭālā) "murder"; and so even  "asked";  "question" (for theoretical šaʾʾel, šuʾʾālā). Here and there the falling away of the doubling in the pronunciation is to be made up for by lengthening the vowel.

C. But still in certain cases a short vowel holds its ground even in an open syllable: thus with as the initial letter of a syllable (§ 34), e. g.  for  "angel"; in the secondary forms,  for ,  "stands", "sets" (§ 177 C) ; in many later forms like ,  (§ 158 D); and in the forms of the Imperative with Object-suffixes like  "lead me" (§ 190), &c. So also is it in forms like "she revealed it" (§ 152), a recent formation from  +. The Nestorians (always?) lengthen the a in such cases (§ 42).

D. Where there had been two open syllables with short vowels, one of these had of course to remain ; thus from dahavā "gold";  from dakharā "a male";  from qaṭalath "she killed", &c.

E. So too, when the prefixes come before a vowel-less consonant, their vowel remains as an a, thus  from  +  "in a king";  "to a man";  "who killed";  "and took". With the words mentioned in § 51, which may assume an as their commencement, the prefix  is given as, and so with the other prefixes, thus  "in the written bond";  "to the six", &c.

Thus too, a appears in the corresponding case, when several such prefixes come together at the beginning of a word: " ",