Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/788

 762 SEMITIC RACE AND LANGUAGES SEMMERING Names of characters.

Archaic Hebrew. Palmy- rene of 10 B. C. Modem Hebrew type. English equivalents. Aleph Beth 3

"1 N 2 a b Gimel Daleth .... He - T 3- X M 7T 3 "I n g d h Vav -^ 1 i V Zayin 77 7 z Cheth Teth Zfr a y it n L3 kh t Yod <* i v Kaph Lamed Mem /?v / L j tJ I* >T D b o k 1 m Nun / i J I 3 n Samech. . . Ain ty J t) y D U 8 Indefinite. Pe -/ a D p Tsade o
 * M

y ta Qoph. . w p K P q Resh q ^ r 1 r Shin w I V ih Tav v y> rv th Besides the vowel modifications influencing the sense of the word itself, the Semitic tongues make a wide use of external formative ele- ments, of prefixes and suffixes, and to a more limited extent also of infixes or inserted letters or syllables. There is a marked difference be- tween the Semitic and the Indo-European verb. While equally distinguishing the singular, dual, and plural numbers, and the first, second, and third persons, and forming in a measure after the same fashion the various personal endings, namely, by adding pronominal elements to the verbal roots, yet the Semitic conception of the order of time is so utterly at variance with the Aryan conception of it as to produce an en- tirely different system of conjugation. There are in Semitic but two tenses, the one deno- ting generally completed action, and the other incomplete, but both are capable of expressing in certain circumstances present, past, and fu- ture time. Though subjunctive, imperative, and other less important modal forms appear in conjunction with the imperfect, yet the Se- mitic languages are almost wholly devoid of genuine modal expressions. In their stead the verb admits of a large number of conjugations, giving to it either a transitive, causal, inten- sive, iterative, conative, reflexive, or other sim- ilar meaning. Every conjugation has special forms of verbal nouns and adjectives, infini- tives, and participles. The system of conjuga- tions is not equally developed in all the lan- guages belonging to the Semitic family; but, as may be seen in Arabic, it is possible for a verb to have 15 conjugational forms. With the exception of Arabic, no Semitic language distinguishes case, and in Arabic no other than the nominative, genitive, and accusative is in- dicated. Otherwise nouns are either mascu- line or feminine, and admit of singular, plural, and dual number. SEMLER, Johann Salomo, a German theologian, born in Saalfeld, Dec. 18, 1725, died in Halle, March 14, 1791. He studied at Halle, and in 1750 became editor of the Cdburger Zeitung, in 1751 professor of history at Altdorf, and in 1752 professor of theology at Halle, where he was made director of the theological seminary in 1757. He was at first a pietist, but became a leader of the rationalists. He distinguished between the canonicity and inspiration of the Scriptures, maintaining that they are divine only so far as their contents are of an ethical nature, that the sacred writers " accommoda- ted" their expressions to the mistaken ideas of their times, and that a just criticism can re- tain the divine element while rejecting what i& accommodated and false. He was however an earnest opponent of deism. His works include Selecta Capita Historic Ecclesiastics (3 vols., 1767-'9); Commentationes Historic de Anti- quo Christianorum Statu (2 vols., l771-'2); Abhandlung non der Untersuchung des Kanont (4 vols., 177l-'6); Apparatus ad liberalem Veterit Testamenti Interpretationem (1778); Imtitutio ad Doctrinam Christianam (1774); Versuch einer biblischen Damonologie (1776) ; Versuch christlicher JahrMcher (2 vols., 1783- '6); and Observations Nova, quibus Historia Christianorum usque ad Constantinum Mag- num illustratur (1784). He also published an autobiography (2 vols., 1781-'2). SEMLIN (Slavonian, Zemun ; Hun. Zimony), a town of the Hungarian kingdom, in Slavonia (formerly in the Military Frontier), at the junction of the Save with the Danube, 3 in. N. W. of Belgrade in Servia; pop. in 1870, 8,915, mostly Slavonians, Serbs, Germans, and Jews. It is the principal entrepot of the trade between Austria and Turkey. During the Hun- garian and Austrian wars with the Turks its situation often gave it importance. SEMMEREVG, or Sommering, a branch of the Noric chain of Alps, between Austria prop- er and Styria, 4,416 ft. high, containing the principal pass between Lower Austria and the more southern provinces of the Austrian empire. In the 14th century a duke of Styria