Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/126

 sometimes coincide with roots of a similar meaning in the Indo-Germanic family of languages. Of other roots there is definite evidence that Semitic linguistic consciousness regarded them as onomatopoetic, whilst the Indo-Germanie instinct fails to recognize in them any imitation of sound.

(c) Stems with the harder, stronger consonants are in general to be regarded as the older, from which a number of later stems probably arose through softening of the consonants; cf. and, and ,  and ,  and , ;  and , and the almost consistent change of initial  to. In other instances, however, the harder stems have only been adopted at a later period from Aramaic, e.g., Hebr. . Finally in many cases the harder and softer stems may have been in use together from the first, thus often distinguishing, by a kind of sound-painting, the intensive action from the less intensive; see above, , &c.

(d) When two consonants are united to form a root they are usually either both emphatic or both middle-hard or both soft, e.g., , , , never , , , ,. Within (triliteral) stems the first and second consonants are never identical. The apparent exceptions are either due to reduplication of the root, e.g., Arabic , or result from other causes, cf. e.g. in the. The first and third consonants are very seldom identical except in what are called concave stems (with middle or ), e.g., ; note, however, , , , , and on   see. The second and third consonants on the other hand are very frequently identical, see.

(e) The softening mentioned under l is sometimes so great that strong consonants, especially in the middle of the stem, actually pass into vowels: cf. , and  ff. if is for.

(f) Some of the cases in which triliteral stems cannot with certainty be traced back to a biliteral root, may be due to a combination of two roots—a simple method of forming expressions to correspond to more complex ideas.

3. Stems of four, or even (in the case of nouns) of five consonants are secondary formations. They arise from an extension of the triliteral stem: (a) by addition of a fourth stem-consonant; (b) in some eases perhaps by composition and contraction of two triliteral stems, by which means even quinquiliterals are produced. Stems which have arisen from reduplication of the biliteral root, or from the mere repetition of one or two of the three original stem-consonants, e.g. from  or,  from , are usually not regarded as quadriliterals or quinqueliterals, but as conjugational forms (§ 55); so also the few words which are formed with the prefix , as  from , correspond to the Aramaic conjugation Šaphʿēl,.

Rem. on (a). The letters r and l, especially, are inserted between the first and second radicals, e.g., ; =  (this insertion of an r is especially frequent in Aramaic);  from