What are the differences between a systems programming language and Application programming language?
As with a great many things in IT, the line is blurry. For example, C started its life as a systems programming language (and was used to implement Unix), but was and is used for applications development too. 
Having said that, there are clearly some languages better suited to systems programming than others (eg. C/C++ are better suited than COBOL/FORTRAN for systems programming). Likewise there are languages that are better suited to applications development and not systems programming eg. VB.NET.
The language features that stand out from the examples above, are the low level features of the systems programming languages like C/C++ (eg. pointers, bit manipulation operators, etc). There is of course the old joke that C is a "Sea" level language (sitting somewhere between the assembly level and the "high" level).  
Warning: I'm coming at systems programming from the perspective of OS developer / OS tool developer.
I think it is fair to say, notwithstanding the projects to develop OSes with Java (though I believe mostly are native compiled, rather than to byte code and JIT'ed / interpreted), that systems programming languages target native machine code of their target platforms. So languages that primarily target managed code / interpreted code are less likely to be used for systems programming. 
Anyway, that is surely enough to stir up some comments both in support and in opposition :)
Difference between Systems programming language and Application programming languages