Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/764

 752 ETHIOPIA (LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE) ceptions, the imperfect is also the source of the moods. There are only two, the subjunctive and the imperative. Persons, gender, and num- ber are indicated by pronominal prefixes to a verb in the imperfect tense or in the subjunctive mood, but by suffixes when the verb is in the perfect tense. The prefixes and suffixes used in conjugating verbs are abbreviations of the personal pronouns. Only the masculine and feminine genders are distinguished. The mas- culine has no special termination. Feminine words end generally in at, which was the origi- nal form, or in abbreviations and assimilations of this termination, as at, et, and t. The Ethiopic, like the Syriac, abandoned the dual number. The singular and plural numbers are strictly contrasted ; even the collectives are ca- pable of receiving a plural termination, and the external formation of the plural is often substituted by an internal change of vowel. These plural forms, thus internally constructed, admit of a further plural termination, generally feminine. The cases of nouns, as in other Semitic languages, are not fully indicated, only the nominative, genitive, and accusative being recognized. The pronouns comprise demon- stratives, reflexives, interrogatives, and per- sonals. The prepositions are frequently ap- pended to pronominal suffixes, and conjunc- tions are often derived from prepositions, if not from relative or demonstrative pronouns, and are sometimes used as enclitics. The Ethiopic has no article, like all Abyssinian languages with the exception of the Saho. Where in other languages it would be necessary to use an ar- ticle in order to convey a certain idea, the Ethiopic makes use of relative or demonstra- tive pronouns. Almost every part of a sen- tence is subordinate to the verb, even the subject, which is often put in the accusative or is governed by prepositions. Subject and pre- dicate stand side by side without a copulative, and agree in gender and number. The position of the parts of speech in a sentence is not gov- erned by strict rules. The predicate stands generally first, next the subject, and last the object. The literature of the Ethiopic or Geez is chiefly confined to the service of the church. There are numerous translations of the books of the Old and New Testaments and of foreign theological works. There are also some origi- nal theological disquisitions, which bear an un- mistakable impress of the phraseology of the Bible. Such independent works date princi- pally between A. D. 1300 and 1600. Books on conjuring, magic, astrology, and medicine were also introduced during this period. Early Ethiopian poetry bears a strong resemblance to the Hebrew psalms, but it fell gradually from Biblical subjects to eulogies of saints, and decreased at the same time in literary worth. There is little of metric construction, and at best only an attempt at harmonizing the verses, but without understanding the principles of rhyme. No native grammar has come down to us ; the attempts at Amharic- Ethiopic lex- icons that have been preserved are all in a very crude condition and without grammatical references. The European study of the Ethi- opic dates from the 16th century. In 1548 Tessa-Zion, an Abyssinian, published a New Testament in Rome ; but contemporaneous with him, if not earlier, were Johann Potken, Ma- rianus Victorius, Scaliger, Petraeus, Nisselius, Wemmers, and Castellius. Hiob Ludolf is the father of the more accurate knowledge of the language. He published in the latter half of the 17th century a grammar and a lexicon, which are still the standard authority. His works are based on oral instruction received from an Abyssinian, at a time when the Ethio- pic was still somewhat in use and a common study. But philological science has made such progress that his labors need remodelling. The Ethiopic languages were subsequently neglect- ed. For 150 years scarcely a text was revised or republished, and only a few Hebrew gram- mars made an occasional reference to them. In 1823 Hupfeld published Exercitationes ^Ethio- picw, giving a new impulse to Ethiopian phi- lology. The principal later works are : F. Tuch, Commentatio de JEthiopica Linguae, Sonorum Sibilantium, Natura et Usu (Leipsic, 1854); A. Dillmann, Grammatik der Aethiopischen Sprache (Leipsic, 1857) ; Eberhard Schrader, De Lingua ^Ethiopicce cum Cognatis Linguis Comparatione (Gottingen, I860). The Am- haric language (properly Amharittfia) succeed- ed the Ethiopic or Geez, of which it is a modi- ii cation, and enters extensively into the lan- guages of Argobba and Harrar. Amhara, for- merly an important province of Abyssinia, is now the seat of several Galla tribes. As a de- scendant of the Ethiopic, the Amharic is also related to the Semitic ; but it has adopted many forms and words from surrounding na- tions which bear no relation to that family. It is written with the same alphabet as the Ethiopic, with the addition of seven peculiar orders of letters. Its grammatical forms and construction are also very similar to those of the parent tongue, though the verb admits of a greater variety of flexion. It has seven moods : indicative, contingent, subjunctive, construc- tive, imperative, infinitive, and participial. The simple preterite of the indicative, the compound preterite of the contingent, and the compound preterite of the constructive, are used to ex- press past time. The present indicative, the second or aorist constructive, and the contin- gent with conjunctions denote the present. The infinitive can be used as a verbal noun, and as such it assumes nominal suffixes, but relates to or acts upon other nouns in a verbal capacity. By the aid of suffixed pronouns and prepositions, the verb is capable of expressing a whole sentence by itself. The verb is gen- erally at the end of the sentence, whether the object be simple or complex. The language is very rich in words, but it has no literature. The earliest work on the Amharic language is Ludolf 's Lexicon Amharico-Latinum (Frank-