A CRITICAL GRAMMAR OF THE HEBREW LANGUAGE. BY ISAAC NORDHEIMER, PHIL. DOCT., PROFESSOR OF ARABIC AND OTHER ORIENTAL LANGUAGES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. NEW YORK: WILEY AND PUTNAM, No. 161 BROADWAY. M DCCC XLI. Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1841, by ISAAC NORDHEIMER, In the Clerk's office of the Southern District of New York. BIBLIOTHECA ᎡᎬᏀᏞᎪ. University Press. JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER, 114 Nassau-street. PREFACE AND INTRODUCTION. IN publishing the second volume of his Grammar, the author feels himself to be only liquidating a debt of honour which he has for some time been under to the public; yet believing that the book will bear internal evidence that the delay has been caused not by any negligence on his part, but by an earnest desire to perform his task in a manner satisfactory both to the public and himself, he hopes therein to find his excuse for the lateness of its appearance. The truth is, and the author is willing to acknowledge it, that in promising the publication of the present volume at a much earlier period, he was not fully aware of the real nature of his undertaking and of the amount of time and labour its proper execution would necessarily involve. He had indeed imbibed to some extent the prevalent opinion, caused partly by the rapid progress usually made in the first stages of the study of Hebrew and partly by the imperfect manner in which the subject has hitherto been treated, that the syntax of the Hebrew as compared with its etymology is of minor importance. He had, however, no sooner entered upon his work in good earnest, than he became fully aware of the erroneousness of such an impression. In undertaking to discuss the syntax of a language, the grammarian enters upon a more extensive, more complicated, and at the same time more interesting branch of grammatical science than that presented in the etymology, which in fact is but the preparation for it. In the etymology he has to exhibit the formation of words from the elementary sounds composing them, as well as the changes which their forms undergo in the course of grammatical inflection: but in so doing he treats all analytically and independently of the mutual relations of words to one another which give rise to these changes. Not so in the syntax: here his inquiries into the nature of words and their forms are to be conducted in the opposite manner, i. e. synthetically, and chiefly with the view of ascertaining the relations in which words may stand to one another, and the means employed for indicating such relations. He must therefore be aware at the very outset, that his self-imposed task involves no less than the investigation and exhibition of the fundamental principles on which the entire mechanism of language depends. Thus, to ascertain the nature of the representa tion of an idea formed by a compound sentence, he must be able to follow it out from its primitive element, through the several declarations, modifications, and restrictions made by its other members, to its completion; and to find out the share of each in the expression of the idea conveyed by the whole. He must also be able, on the other hand, to descend analytically from the complete sentence through all its branches, and, by determining the precise office of each of its members, to arrive at the simple idea which serves as a foundation to the whole. For language is properly to be regarded as a complete organic system, each part of which performs its prescribed function in connection with the rest: and the grammarian may be compared to the physiologist or the man of science, who undertakes to describe the organization of an animal or plant, or the construction of a complicated piece of machinery; such a one should not and cannot rest satisfied with a mere knowledge of the several parts and of the places they respectively occupy, but must also make himself acquainted with the peculiar powers of each, with the manner in which one operates upon another, and how they all work together to form a harmonious whole. Thus at the very outset, and while forming the plan of his syntax, the grammarian cannot fail to discover that the task he has undertaken is one of much greater complexity and difficulty than the etymology. The latter indeed offers in itself the outlines of a plan, by means of the several parts of speech, which are to be considered and discussed independently of each other. In the syntax, on the contrary, the mechanism of language is to be viewed in operation, that is, each word must be considered with regard to the relations it bears to others and the means employed for their indication; but as these relations are of so diversified a character, and as the same form which denotes one of them is also used for many more, he finds that with whatever topic he may think to commence his exposition, the treatment of some other is necessarily presupposed, so that he is utterly at a loss where to begin and where to end. As, however, no scientific investigation can hope to be successful which is not conducted upon a plan derived from the subject itself and from the nature of the inquiry, he must settle his mode of treatment, notwithstanding these embarrassments, before proceeding further. In the mental struggle which here ensues, and which no grammarian who seriously sets about the undertaking and is not content to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors can fail to experience, there are two opposite extremes into which he is in danger of falling. The one is, that despairing to find an internal clue to the mazy labyrinth of the various kinds of words and relations, he may content himself with some objective order presented by the etymology, and merely exhibit the relations of the several parts of speech in an unconnected manner according to their forms. The other danger he is exposed to is, that being convinced that the success and originality of his per formance will in great measure depend on the theoretical views upon which it is based, he may adopt an arbitrary method of his own invention, one not founded on an accurate study of the organization of language, and into which the different parts of speech are introduced without regard to their classification. The former may appropriately be termed the objective, and the latter the subjective mode of treatment. It is utterly impossible that either of these methods in the present state of philology should lead to satisfactory results. The first or objective plan will indeed facilitate the grammarian's progress by furnishing him with a regular series of topics for discussion, and will enable the learner to acquire by study a familiar acquaintance with a number of rules and facts, to which when needed he can readily refer; the student however cannot hope to obtain by it a comprehensive view of the whole language as an organic system, for such a view was not possessed by the author himself, Moreover, many important phenomena which can be brought to light by the synthetical mode of investigation alone, must thus necessarily escape the grammarian's attention, while many others must offer themselves to him in an erroneous point of view. This statement will be fully borne out by a close examination of the grammatical productions of GESENIUS, which are executed precisely on the plan here described. The opposite method, being founded on the observation of some internal congruities, cannot fail to present many of the laws of syntactical construction in a novel, striking, and often accurate light; yet, as on the whole such a plan is rather an arbitrary creation of the author's mind than one lying in the nature of language itself, it tears many individuals of the several parts of speech from their proper connection, and thus causes him to overlook numerous important facts; at the same time it bewilders the student, who when desiring an explanation of some simple phenomenon finds himself compelled to search through the whole volume, with the doubtful expectation of meeting with it at last. The correctness of these remarks will at once be recognised by such as are acquainted with the peculiarities of EWALD'S grammatical treatises, in which these features predominate to a peculiar degree. It became therefore perfectly evident to the author of this work, after having satisfied himself by due examination and reflection of what a truly philosophical treatment of the subject of syntax requires, that, in order to avoid the faults and imperfections of these two extremes, he must form his own plan, collect his own materials, and digest and reproduce them in such manner as to follow as closely as possible the simple and natural method pursued by language in its formation. He was convinced, moreover, that one who would succeed in discovering and expounding the laws on which the syntactical structure of a language like the Hebrew depends, must not conduct his inquiry according to preconceived notions derived from the study |