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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Dr. Hincks once spoke of Assyrian as the Sanskrit of the Semitic languages, and the progress of cuneiform decipherment has tended to show that his words were not greatly exaggerated. It is true that Assyrian belongs to the northern branch of the Semitic family, which includes Hebrew and Aramaic, and not to the southern, which comprises Arabic and Ethiopic; it is true, also, that it bears a closer relationship to Hebrew and Phœnician than to any other Semitic idiom; but it is no less true that it has thrown an unexpected light on several of the problems of general Semitic philology. The reasons of this are clear enough. We possess contemporaneous monuments of the language from a very remote date, far beyond the antiquity which can be ascribed to any other record of Semitic speech; the language, even at that time, was already a literary one, and so stereotyped certain early grammatical forms that have been lost or obscured in the other dialects which did not become literary until at a much later period of growth; the syllabic character of the writing has preserved the vowels exactly as they were pronounced; and the monuments were inscribed while the speech of the people was still a living one, and not handed down through the doubtful channels of tradition and copyists.
page 24 note 1 Études Accadiennes, tom. i. ptie. 1. p. 20.Google Scholar
page 26 note 1 Published in the Transactions, pp. 25–34.Google Scholar
page 27 note 1 Besides -acu we also find -aca (e.g. tsibaca ‘I wish,’ Naksh-i-Rustam, 24) This is the objective case of the pronoun, which is alone joined with the verbal base in the Aryan languages, as in ad-mi. Just as the Aryan mi is weakened from ma, so a is regularly weakened in Assyrian to i. We do not find -aci however. In Hebrew, on the other hand, i is weakened from u (e.g. 
for 
).
page 28 note 1 pp. 31–33. So too Delitzsch, , Assyrische Studien, vol. i. p. 123.Google Scholar
page 28 note 2 “Opus Aramæum,” pp. 334–336.Google Scholar
page 28 note 3 Where Kimchi saw merely a yod eompaginis. Ewald would make 
like 
for 
(with the genitival yod), etc. The punctuators, however, assimilated these forms to those of the Aramaic tempus durans.
page 28 note 4 “Opus Aramæum,” p. 336.Google Scholar
page 28 note 5 Geldart, , p. 31.Google Scholar
page 29 note 1 So Winer: Fürst writes 
.
page 32 note 1 An interesting example of the 3rd pers. masc. pi. Permansive Kal of this verb 
‘to come’ (not 
as Dr. Schrader conjectures), will be found in W. A. I. ii. 65, 6, where it is written 
bū.
page 32 note 2 Dr. Schrader, calls this a Perfect (“Die Höllenfahrt der Istar,” p. 26).Google Scholar
page 33 note 1 Called a Perfect by Dr. Schrader (Zeitschrift d. D. M. G. xxviii. 1, S. 137). Oppert, M. translates ‘se déchira le visage’ (“L'immortalité de l'âme chez les Chaldéans,” p. 16).Google Scholar
page 33 note 2 From 
; it renders the Accadian mun-uddu. As a participle it has a passive sense; e.g. abu Nannar.… subū ‘father moon-god.… that art caused to come (periodically)’ (K. 2861, obv. 14).
page 35 note 1 So lū in Assyrian (see my Assyrian Grammar, p. 170)Google Scholar, and 
(ἕτοιμος) in later Hebrew.
page 35 note 2 The difficulties we experience in this matter are not greater than those which Ludolf had to contend with in Ethiopic. Thus we find him writing yĕnágĕr yenagger.
page 36 note 1 I am inclined(to think that this was pronounced yiscun by the Assyrians. At all events verbs 
make yatsab in the 3rd pers. masc. sing. Present Kal (W. A. I. ii. 12, 23), and in Babylonian 
ebus ‘he made’ (
) is sometimes written i-bus, sometimes e-i-bus, as though for eybus (= yebus).
page 38 note 1 p. 56.
page 38 note 2 See Driver, Use of the Tenses in Hebrew, Appendix ii.
page 40 note 1 The accentuation of Assyrian words agrees very remarkably in many-particulars with that of Ethiopic, as described by Dr. Trumpp, in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. xxviii. 4 (1874)Google Scholar. As a general rule, the accent, as in Arabic, in thrown back as much as possible, resting upon the antepenult unless the penult has a long vowel or is a closed syllable. To this general rule, however, there were many exceptions. Thus (1) The enclitic conjunction vă threw the accent back upon the preceding syllable, although it might be short, as itsbatūní-va. (2) The possessive pronouns of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd persons when suffixed to a noun threw the accent back on the preceding syllable, as panú-ca ‘thy face,’ ramanú-su ‘himself,’ ramanú-sun ‘themselves.’ (3) The possessive pronoun suffixes of the verb, with the exception of the 2nd plural and the 3rd masc. sings., threw the accent back upon the preceding syllable, as raśib-á-ni ‘pierce me,’ itticruh-á-ni ‘they were estranged from me,’ tucassipí-ni ‘thou (fem.) didst reveal to me,’ pitá-si ‘open for her.’ A double accent is even permitted in icsudá-sú-va ‘he conquered him, and.’ (4) The vowel between the 1st and 2nd radical was accented in the present Kal, as isácin, isácinu. So, too, in the quadriliteral iparásid. (5) The penult was accented in the 3rd person pl. masculine (? and feminine), as itsbútu ‘they seized,’ immáru ‘they were visible,’ ittanúru ‘they brought back,’ itúru ‘they returned.’ (6) The present Kal of verbs 
, as iséri (
), isíśi (
). (7) The 3rd person sing, of the Subjective Aorist of Niphal and Kal, as ippisídu ‘it was alleged,’ inúkhu ‘it rested.’ (8) Dissyllabic nouns whose 1st syllable was accented, the 2nd syllable being short, accented the 2nd syllable in the plural, as nakháli ‘valleys,’ nacíri ‘enemies,’ in contradistinction to the genitive singular nákhli and nácri. (9) Certain nouns accented the penult like agúru ‘cement,’ citstsílu ‘royal,’ barzílu ‘iron,’ cidínu ‘ordinance,’ cudúru ‘landmark,’ adánu ‘season,’ śulúmu ‘alliance.’ Assyrian accentuation is a question of some importance, but, so far as I know, the only book that treats of it is my “Assyrian Grammar for Comparative Purposes.” It is a matter of considerable difficulty to ascertain whether a double letter has an accentual or a grammatical origin.
page 41 note 1 Another reason, however, may be found in the fact that Concave verhs necessarily formed their Kal aorist iein (for icyin = icvin) or icur (for ictiur), and their present ican (for icáyin = icávin) or icáyan, and the distinction thus originated may well he supposed to have heen extended by analogy to other verbs.
page 43 note 1 
.
page 43 note 2 As the word is followed by the conjunction va, however, it is just possible that we should read ikhśaśavva, where śav would stand for śu, as in ablav for ablu ‘son’ (W. A. I. i. 51, 1, 16).
page 45 note 1 
(Is. xxxv. 1) might be quoted as an instance of the retention of the final m in Hebrew, but a more natural explanation of the word is that the final 
has been assimilated to the first letter of the following word 
like 
(Numb. iii. 49). Wetzstein, however, met with a Bedouin tribe which said -um for -u, e.g. acalum ‘they have eaten.’
page 49 note 1 Maskil le-Sopher, p. 26.Google Scholar
page 49 note 2 Institutions, p. 275.Google Scholar
page 49 note 3 Observations, p. 143.Google Scholar
page 50 note 1 Pages 111 and 135.
page 51 note 1 Page 123.
page 52 note 1 Dillmann, , Grammatik d. Aeth. Sprache, p. 261.Google Scholar
page 53 note 1 See his “Hebrew Grammar,” pp. 83, 181Google Scholar, and in the Journal of Sacred Literature, 07, 1850, p. 195.Google Scholar
page 53 note 2 See Olshausen, , “Heb. Lehrb.” p. 22Google Scholar; Merx, , “Grammatica Syriaca,” p. 197.Google Scholar; Philippi, , “Wesen und Ursprung d. Stat. Constr.” p. 169Google Scholar; Turner, “Studies Biblical and Oriental,” p. 365 sq.Google Scholar, who also refers to Koch, , “Der Semitische Infinitiv,” p. 5.Google Scholar
page 54 note 1 See Steinthal, , Charakteristik der hauptsächlichsten Typen des Sprachtaues, pp. 156–176.Google Scholar
page 54 note 2 Dillmann, , Grammatik, p. 136.Google Scholar
page 55 note 1 pp. 273–285 (second edition).
page 57 note 1 So, too, listapparūni ‘may they sead’ (Smith, 's Assur-bani-pal, p. 188, r)Google Scholar, which is an example of an Iphtael.
page 58 note 1 The attempt to identify (a)cu and tu is unsatisfactory, partly because forms like the Assyrian badhlac as well as a comparison of an-acu and an-ta (atta) imply that the initial vowel originally formed part of the pronoun-suffix, partly because an interchange of 
and 
in Semitic has never been satisfactorily made out. Ethiopic, as well as Assyrian, bears testimony to the existence of an old demonstrative tu, ti, ta, tu in Ethiopic meaning ‘hic,’ ‘he’ (as in wĕ-tu] and ti ‘hæc,’ ‘she’ (as in yĕ-ti). The Assyrian yā-tu shows that this pronoun could be suffixed to the first person as well as to the third (sunu-tu, sina-tu), and I am therefore inclined to suggest that tu was primitively an independent word which might be used for either one of the 3 persons, but that after a time, in accordance with the analogy of the 3rd person su ‘he,’ and sa or si ‘she,’ tu came to be restricted to the 1st person and ta and ti to the second. It is quite in agreement with Semitic character to regard the second person as weaker than the first. Of course before this employment of tu and ta (ti) came about, su and sa (si) would have been appropriated to the expression of the 3rd person. If Dr. Schrader is right in his view of the Assyrian yā-si ‘myself,’ and cunu-si ‘your,’ the ordinary 3rd personal pronoun would have been used as a suffix of the 1st and 2nd pronouns just like tu (ti). In Japanese the same word may stand for all 3 persons, and the German er, like the Highlander's she, maybe used for the 2nd person, as well as under certain circumstances for the first. If the suggestion I have thrown out be correct, the Semites would have employed tu as well as ya and acu for the 1st personal pronoun before their separation and before the creation of a Perfect tense.