2.2 Root-and-pattern morphology
2.3.1 Templatic loan verbs
2.3 Concatenative morphology
We have, so far, looked at the Semitic side of Maltese verbal morphology. However, Mal-‐
tese is very different from Arabic and other Semitic languages. Centuries of intense lan-‐
guage contact with Sicilian, Italian and English have brought about two major changes.
First, the role of root-‐and-‐pattern morphology, as was described in the first part of this chapter, is much reduced, though still very present and productive, in a sense that will be discussed in Sect. 2.4. Second, the pressure exerted on Maltese by non-‐Semitic lan-‐
guages gave rise to new morphological structures that are not found in Arabic. These morphological structures, in particular the verbal ones, are the focus of this section, which owes a great deal to Mifsud (1994, 1995a, 1996) and Hoberman & Aronoff’s (2003) in-‐depth treatments of loan verbs in Maltese.
The organization of this section is as follows. In Sect. 2.3.1, I discuss the way loans are assimilated in the verbal mechanisms of root-‐and-‐pattern morphology. Next, in Sect.
2.3.2, I examine the concatenative innovations of loan verbs that are not incorporated in the templatic system, and briefly describe the inflectional morphology of this class of concatenative verbs.
2.3.1 Templatic loan verbs
The class of templatic verbs includes not only verbs of Semitic origin, but also a large number of verbs from Romance and a couple from English. The Arabicization of loan verbs in Maltese is a complex process involving two main stages. To begin with, 3 or 4 consonants, which will serve as the consonantal root, are extracted from a loan stem.
This novel root is then combined with one or more of the verbal patterns, yielding Mal-‐
tese templatic verbs. Tri-‐consonantal pitter ‘paint’, vara ‘launch’, and quadri-‐
consonantal ċapċap ‘clap’, pinġa ‘draw’ are a few examples of verbs of non-‐Semitic ori-‐
gin that have been completely integrated into Maltese root-‐and-‐pattern morphology, and may hence be decomposed into a consonantal root and a binyan, e.g., a strong root
√ptr and binyan II (pitter), a weak-‐final root √vrj and binyan III (vara). Only their ety-‐
mology differentiates these verbs from indigenous verbs. Sometimes templatic loan verbs are also distinguishable from their root consonants, as they may include one or more of the seven phonemes not found in Arabic /p, v, g, tʃ, ts, dz, ʒ/, which Maltese ac-‐
quired through contact with Romance and English (cf. Sect. 1.2.1), and from their vow-‐
els, as they have a different range of vowel sequences than the native binyanim (cf. Sect.
2.2.2).
Templatic loan verbs may be separated into two major classes, those derived from weak-‐final roots (e.g., vara) and those derived from the other root types, i.e. strong regular and reduplicative, and weak-‐initial and weak-‐medial (e.g., pitter). In what fol-‐
lows, I outline two key differences between the two groups, which in Mifsud’s (1995a) classification are labeled Type A (R, Red., W-‐I, W-‐M) and Type B (W-‐F) loan verbs. For ease of reference, I use Mifsud’s labels for the two classes.
The first difference concerns the source they come from. In the case of Type A verbs, the radicals are generally extracted from previously borrowed nouns and adjec-‐
tives, such as pitter ‘paint’ derived from pittur ‘painter’ (cf. Sicilian pitturi), and werreċ
‘make cross-‐eyed‘ derived from werċ ‘cross-‐eyed’ (cf. Old Italian vercio, Sicilian guer-
ciu).37 Mifsud (1995a) calls these denominal and deadjectival verbs “second generation loans”, as they are derived from already naturalized nominal or adjectival forms, many of which had probably been subjected to the process of root extraction for the forma-‐
tion of broken plurals (e.g., werċ – wereċ ‘cross-‐eyed.PL’).38 By contrast, fully naturalized Type B verbs are usually loans the immediate etymon of which is nonnative, like vara
‘launch’ (cf. Italian varare).
The second difference between the two groups of templatic loan verbs lies in the shape of their stem. In their citation form, i.e. third person singular masculine perfec-‐
tive, Type A verbs end in a consonant, as pitter and ċapċap. Type B verbs, on the other hand, always end in a vowel, as vara and pinġa.
37 Of particular interest are cases in which the loan stem has only two consonants and a third consonant, a latent weak radical, is assumed where the loan has a long vowel bounded by two consonants. For instance, from pipa ‘smoking pipe’ the tri-‐consonantal root √pjp is extracted, as is evident when the root is cast, say, in binyan II pejjep ‘smoke’.
38 Loan verbs completely integrated into Arabic, both standard and dialectal, are to a great extent also de-‐
rived from Arabicized nouns and adjectives (cf. Mifsud 1995a: 49-‐55).
In addition, Type B verbs exhibit far less phonological variation in inflection than Type A verbs do, as is evident from their paradigms in Table 2.11. Except for stress shift, verbs such as vara and pinġa normally require no change in the stem. Inflectional affixes of Type A verbs, by contrast, subject the stem to several allomorphic variations.
The inflectional forms of Type B verbs guarantee the formal integrity of the loan stem, so much so that they can be essentially described in terms of a stem plus conjugational suffixes (cf. Sect. 2.2.3). In view of this, weak-‐final loan verbs have been interpreted as the link between templatic and concatenative verbs (cf. Mifsud 1994, 1995a, 1996).
Table 2.11 Paradigms of Type A pitter ‘paint’ and Type B vara ‘launch’
Perfective Imperfective Perfective Imperfective
1SG pittir-t in-pitter var-ajt in-vara
2SG pittir-t t-pitter var-ajt t-vara
3SG.M pitter j-pitter vara j-vara
3SG.F pittr-et t-pitter var-at t-vara
1PL pittir-na in-pittr-u var-ajna in-var-aw
2PL pittir-tu t-pittr-u var-ajtu t-var-aw
3PL pittr-u j-pittr-u var-aw j-var-aw
Before turning to a description of the concatenative verb formation strategy in Mal-‐
tese, one final note is in order on loan verbs that, in several respects, lie in between templatic and concatenative verbs. Some examples include kompla ‘complete, continue’
(cf. kampa ‘QI, get by’), irbatta ‘clinch’ (cf. batta ‘II, abate’), skanta ‘amaze‘ and irkanta
‘auction’ (cf. kanta ‘QI, sing’), skorra ‘go beyond’ (cf. korra ‘II, hurt’), mantna ‘maintain’
(cf. majna ‘QI, wane’). While conforming to the syllabic structure of the binyanim, their consonantal content does not match the tri-‐ or quadri-‐consonantal structure. They may be analyzed as syllabic variants of templatic verbs, where one or more of the root con-‐
sonants was, so to say, substituted by a consonant cluster, underlined above.
Evidence for the interpretation of these forms as syllabic variants of binyanim comes from two points. First, some of them take part in the derivational processes available to templatic verbs, e.g., tkompla ‘QII, be continued’, tmantna ‘QII, be main-‐
tained’. Second, they do not take initial gemination (where phonologically permissible), which is a characteristic of concatenative verbs, such as ikkompila ‘compile’ (cf. Sect.
2.3.2). However, other aspects of these verbs point to the opposite conclusion, such as the fact that they exhibit consonant clusters which disrupt the verbal template, and that some of their morphologically related forms, e.g., past participles (kompl-ut ‘completed’, skorr-ut ‘gone beyond’) and verbal nouns (irkant-ar ‘auctioning’, skant-ament ‘amaze-‐
ment’), are formed concatenatively. For discussion on these in-‐between cases, see Mif-‐
sud (1995a: 89-‐110; 1996: 122-‐126).