6.2 Comparing the two morphologies
In order to be able to compare the two systems and arrive at a unified account of the two verb formation strategies in Maltese, it was important to study root-‐and-‐pattern morphology first. Since templatic verbs constitute a closed class of verbs, it was possi-‐
ble to compile an exhaustive database of all consonantal roots and the patterns they occur in, and come up with a classification based on the lexical semantics and morpho-‐
logical marking of the verbs. In what follows I illustrate the main findings of this exami-‐
nation, as discussed in Ch. 3 and Ch. 4, and propose a way of extending this analysis to concatenative verbs, as shown in Ch. 5.
6.2.1 Analyzing templatic verbs in Maltese
In this study, templatic verbs are understood as the end result of the interdigitation of a category-‐neutral, consonantal root with a binyan, a verbal pattern which has a specific syllabic structure, and slots for vowels and root consonants to fit in. The binyan not only makes the root consonants pronounceable, but it also determines the lexical cate-‐
gory: it is only when roots are inserted in a particular pattern that an actual verb, noun or adjective is formed. This implies that all templatic verbs must be in the form of a bin-‐
yan.
I argued that the binyanim belong to the domain of derivation, not to the marking of inflectional categories such as person, number, tense-‐aspect, and gender. They display two main characteristics of word formation. First, they are not completely productive:
the binyan system is full of gaps (cf. Sect. 4.1). Second, word formation creates words with lexicalized meanings, and when cast in different verbal patterns, roots may take on specialized, non-‐transparent interpretations. See the discussion in Sect. 2.2.2 for further arguments that point to the conclusion that binyan morphology is essentially deriva-‐
tional.
A root can in principle combine with several binyanim to form different verbs.
However, no tri-‐consonantal root combines with all nine patterns. Over two thirds of all tri-‐consonantal roots appear in only one or two patterns. The mean number of patterns per root is around 2, which means that many binyan slots are left empty.
The combination of roots and binyanim is subject to a number of phonological con-‐
straints. For instance, roots starting with /k, t, tʃ, dʒ/ etc. cannot appear in binyan X,
which is characterized by the prefix st-, as they would create onset consonant clusters that are not permissible in Maltese, *kst, *tst etc. In addition, an examination of the pos-‐
sible relationships between patterns and root types, strong (regular, reduplicative) and weak (initial, medial, final), revealed that binyan III and VI disfavor reduplicative roots, and that weak-‐final roots are unlikely to be inserted in binyan II, V and IX. See Sect. 4.1 for further (dis)preferences.
An analysis of the distribution of roots across patterns showed that only four pat-‐
terns are really productive in Maltese, namely binyan I, II, V and VII. Moreover, I argued in Sect. 4.3 that, in terms of morphological productivity, morphosyntactic similarity, and complementarity in distribution, templatic verbs in Maltese make up a four-‐way system: III, VI, VIII, IX are, as it were, the shadow binyanim of II, V, VII and I respec-‐
tively. In general, this quasi-‐allomorphy of patterns is phonologically conditioned. The remaining pattern, binyan X, is highly underrepresented, as it combines with only 24 roots, making up less than one percent of the total number of tri-‐consonantal roots in Maltese.
In Ch. 3, I showed that the binyan system is inherently regular and irregular from three different angles. First, when a root is embedded in more than one pattern, this very often correlates with a regular argument structure alternation (e.g., √ktb, kiteb
‘write’ – inkiteb ‘be written’). However, two or more verbs containing the same root consonants may have two semantically distant interpretations (e.g., √xrb, xorob ‘drink’
– xarrab ‘wet’) or may be synonymous (e.g., √slf, silef ‘lend’ – sellef ‘lend’). The qualita-‐
tive analysis carried out in Ch. 4 brought to light the fact that 61% of all combinations of tri-‐consonantal roots with patterns mark an argument alternation, 18% are synony-‐
mous verbs, 9% correspond to multiple, semantically distant interpretations, and 12%
are cases of roots that derive singleton verbs. Second, from a formal point of view, tem-‐
platic verbs sharing a single consonantal root may either have the same vowel se-‐
quence, as in kiteb and inkiteb, or display vocalic variation, as in xorob and xarrab. Fi-‐
nally, an examination of the distribution of verbs in the lexicon reveals that verbs de-‐
rived from the same root may be fully productive (e.g., passives in binyan V, tqassam ‘be distributed’, always have an active counterpart, typically in binyan II, qassam ‘distrib-‐
ute’) or exhibit gaps in the system (e.g., inchoatives in IX, smar ‘get tanned’, do not al-‐
ways have a corresponding causative).
These conflicting aspects of the binyan system, I argue, can be explained if we:
(a) assume that roots are category-‐neutral and semantically underspecified (it is only when they are inserted in a word pattern that their lexical category is de-‐
termined and that they acquire a specific interpretation);
(b) recognize that there is no one-‐to-‐one relation between the semantic and syntac-‐
tic properties of verbs and their morphological form (the same binyan may host verbs of different semantic types (e.g., a verb in binyan I may be active, causa-‐
tive, inchoative), and verbs of the same semantic type (e.g., active) may appear in different patterns (e.g., I, II, III, VIII));
(c) assume, in line with Marantz (1997, 2001, 2007), Arad (2003a, 2003b, 2005), and others, that:
(i) words can be formed either by merging a root with a category-‐bearing head or by combining an existing word with a new syntactic head;
(ii) word formation from roots gives rise to irregular, non-‐productive proc-‐
esses, whereas word formation from previously formed words results in regular, productive processes.
From the qualitative analysis in Ch. 4, we concluded that one main source of irregu-‐
larity in the binyan system is syncretism. There is no one-‐to-‐one mapping between the morphological form of verbs and their semantic-‐syntactic structure. This can be ob-‐
served in two ways. First, the same combination of binyanim may mark more than one semantic-‐syntactic category. A root in, say, binyan I and II may represent a causative-‐
inchoative alternation (e.g., √għlj, għola ‘rise’, għolla ‘raise’), a pair of synonyms (e.g.,
√bdl, bidel, biddel ‘change’), multiple interpretations (e.g., √tbgħ tebagħ ‘print’, tebba’
‘stain’), and others. Second, the same semantic-‐syntactic feature may be marked by more than one combination of patterns. For instance, the transitive-‐reflexive alterna-‐
tion may be realized in II – V, I – VII, III – VI, etc. (cf. Sect. 4.2).
We also noted that regularity in the system stems from two main sources. First, there is a strong tendency for complementary distribution among the four categories roots fall into (argument alternations, multiple interpretations, synonyms, singletons).
For instance, when a root is inserted in VII and VIII, this almost always correlates with two synonyms and hardly ever with an argument alternation. Second, argument alter-‐
nations are strikingly regular with respect to directionality. While rejecting the deter-‐
ministic approach of traditional grammars of Maltese that find neat associations be-‐
tween patterns and semantic roles such as causative and passive, we can observe the significant contribution of the binyanim in terms of transitivity. The system is, to a cer-‐
tain extent, morphologically transparent as it imposes transitivity constraints on the binyanim. From the fact that some of them are inherently or predominantly intransitive (V, VII, IX) and others are predominantly transitive (II, III), it follows that argument al-‐
ternations are very often unidirectional, with passives, reflexives and non-‐causatives appearing in the patterns that typically host intransitive verbs and their active, non-‐
reflexive and causative counterparts appearing in the predominantly transitive pat-‐
terns.
Although argument alternations display a great degree of regularity, we observed that two alternations, the causative-‐inchoative and causative-‐noncausative, are irregu-‐
lar in several respects. On the basis of the structural distinction between root deriva-‐
tion and word derivation, I argue that passives and reflexives are verb derived, while causatives and non-‐causatives are root derived. In Sect. 4.3, I presented morphonologi-‐
cal and semantic evidence for this claim. Let us go over the key differences between root-‐derived and verb-‐derived verbs.
To begin with, passives and reflexives have the same formal properties (e.g., se-‐
quence of vowels, medial gemination) as the transitive verbs they are derived from.
Causatives and inchoatives, by contrast, may display vocalic variation. In an overall analysis, it turns out that vocalic variation among verbs containing the same root is al-‐
ways associated with root derivations, i.e. multiple interpretations (e.g., fired ‘separate’
– farrad ‘make unpaired’), synonyms (e.g., silef – sellef ‘lend’), causative-‐inchoative (e.g., kiber ‘grow v.i’ – kabbar ‘grow v.t’), causative-‐noncausative (e.g., żifen ‘dance’ – żeffen
‘make one dance’).
Related to this is the observation that passives and reflexives are morphologically more complex than the transitive verbs they alternate with. Causatives and inchoatives, on the other hand, may be both morphologically marked. Besides, there are cases where one labile verb marks both the causative and inchoative verb.
The third piece of evidence is in terms of productivity. While passives and reflexives always have a transitive counterpart, it is not difficult to find causatives that stand alone, without a corresponding inchoative (e.g., sann ‘sharpen’), and inchoatives that lack a causative counterpart (e.g., batta ‘abate’).
Finally, from a semantic point of view, it is very rare for passives and reflexives to take on an interpretation that is not available in their active and non-‐reflexive counter-‐
parts, as discussed in Ch. 3. Causatives, by contrast, acquire specialized and idiomatic meanings that do not exist with their corresponding inchoatives. The same holds for
inchoatives, which may be assigned idiosyncratic interpretations that are not present in the causative verbs they alternate with.
6.2.2 Extending the analysis to concatenative verbs
The causative-‐inchoative alternation was chosen as the point of departure for a com-‐
parative treatment of templatic and concatenative verbs in Maltese because it is a basic argument alternation which makes up around one third of all verb alternations in tem-‐
platic verbs, and because it brings into play various morphological, syntactic and lexical semantic aspects of the verbs.
An examination of the formal encoding of the alternation in Maltese revealed that there is variation in the marking of the alternation, which goes hand in hand with the distinction between the two verb formation strategies. Templatic verbs typically mark the alternation by means of two different morphologically related verbs, with the in-‐
choative verb being generally morphologically more complex than the causative one. By contrast, concatenative verbs do not express the alternation overtly: labile verbs, i.e.
ambitransitive verbal forms, are used to mark both the causative and the inchoative alternant, as in it-tifel iċċarġja l-mobile ‘the boy recharged the mobile’ and il-mobile iċċarġja ‘the mobile recharged’. In a few cases, the reflexive marker ruħ-‐ plus a direct object clitic is used to mark the inchoative alternant, as in il-problema intensifikat ruħha
‘the problem has intensified’.
In Ch. 4 and Ch. 5, I argued that the morphological irregularities of the causative-‐
inchoative alternation are best captured by a root-‐based analysis. In spite of the differ-‐
ences in the formal encoding of the alternation by templatic and concatenative verbs, a unified analysis of the causative-‐inchoative alternation in Maltese can be provided if we assume that all verbs taking part in the alternation are cases of root derivation.
From a sentence creation task and a corpus study on a set of around 40 labile verbs in Maltese, we concluded that labile verbs do not all behave in the same way. Even though they fail to show any morphological mark that would distinguish the causative or inchoative alternant as formally more marked than the other, some of them are more likely to be used in transitive constructions, while others tend to occur in intransitive frames.
This difference among alternating labile verbs was explained in lexical semantic terms. Assuming that the morphosyntactic structure of verbs is directly related to their lexical semantic structure, I argue that the variation found in labile verbs in Maltese is
sensitive to the kind of event named by the verbs in question, whether it is internally or externally caused. Externally caused events, like iċċarġja ‘recharge’, are conceptualized as coming about due to a force external to the entity undergoing the change of state. By contrast, in internally caused events, like sparixxa ‘vanish’, the means for bringing about the change of state is conceptualized as residing in the entity undergoing the change itself. It follows from this that externally caused labile verbs are used more frequently in transitive constructions, whereas internally caused labile verbs occur more often in intransitive frames.