The Internal Passive in Semitic

Abstract

IN the Semitic languages the passive may be expressed in several ways. Nearly all of these languages have a number of reflexive stems that are used for the passive, just as many forms of the Greek middle are so employed; e. g. Syriac '1-4--1 ithqetll, Ethiopic taqatala, Hebrew r niqtdl, all meaning ' he was killed.' In Biblical Aramaic we have a passive which has the same form as the passive participle ; cf. e. g. '1:,1 ie1hzvath 'she was given,' with 1s::b ri'7h 'blessed.' In Assyrian the various permansive forms have, in a majority of cases, a passive meaning; e. g. peti ' it is or was opened,' pabit ' it is or was captured,' epits 'it is made,' nukkums4 'they were heaped up,' sdulkl 'it is completed,' etc. But the passive formation which is most characteristically Semitic is the passive made by so-called internal vowel change;' e. g. Arabic JUY qutila 'he was killed,' which, from a superficial point of view, may be regarded as derived from the active Je qatala, by changing the first two a vowels of the active to u and i respectively. This so-called internal passive occurs in Arabic and Hebrew, and apparently also in Biblical Aramaic and Assyrian. In all these languages the forms have one feature in common, namely, they are all characterized by the presence of an u vowel in the first syllable. In Arabic the passive perfect of the simple stem has the form JX. gutila, with u in the first syllable, and i between the second and third stem consonants. The imperfect is represented by the form uWL iuqtala, which has likewise an u in the first syllable, but an a between the second and third stem consonants. Similar forms are made in all the derived conjugations, e. g.: