4.1 Database of roots and patterns
Having established that the relations between templatic verbs in Maltese are partly sys-‐
tematic and partly unpredictable, it becomes very important to quantify the regular and the irregular share in the binyan system. This section, in fact, takes a quantitative ap-‐
proach, addressing such questions as the following. How many verb-‐creating tri-‐ and quadri-‐consonantal roots are there in Maltese? How many verbs does each root create?
Which verbal patterns are the most or least productive? In order to resolve these and other related issues, it was crucial to compile an exhaustive list of consonantal roots in Maltese and the binyanim they appear in. In what follows, I describe the process of data collection and provide detailed analyses of the distribution and productivity of roots and patterns.
4.1.1 Data collection
In the previous chapters, Maltese templatic verbs were described as a combination of two bound morphemes, a consonantal root and a binyan interwoven within each other in a non-‐concatenative fashion. In Maltese there are around 2000 verb-‐creating roots and eleven binyanim, nine for tri-‐consonantal roots and two for quadri-‐consonantal roots (cf. Table 2.5 for the allomorphic variations of each binyanim, which are dictated by different root types, such as reduplicative, weak-‐final, etc.). I have also shown that, subject to certain combinatorial constraints (cf. Sect. 2.2.2), a tri-‐consonantal root can in principle combine with any of the nine binyanim to create different verbal lexemes.
In practice, however, no tri-‐consonantal root appears in all nine patterns. Rather, around two thirds of all tri-‐consonantal roots appear in only one or two binyanim.
Quadri-‐consonantal roots, by contrast, do combine with both QI and QII binyanim, but about half of them combine with one pattern only (see data below). The discussion that follows revolves primarily around tri-‐consonantal roots and patterns. I occasionally make reference to quadri-‐consonantal verbs, but a fuller treatment of these verbs must await future work (cf. Ellul 2010 for a brief analysis).
Although roots seem to combine freely with patterns, the distribution of templatic verbs within the lexicon is not entirely random. As we shall see in the rest of this chap-‐
ter, there is a degree of organization in the binyan system, particularly in the greater than chance co-‐occurrence of patterns for a given root when one verb is derived from another. In order to achieve a full understanding of the way consonantal roots are mapped into the various binyanim, it was necessary to set up an exhaustive database of tri-‐ and quadri-‐consonantal roots and record the number of verbs in each pattern.
Using Serracino-‐Inglott’s (1975-‐1989) monolingual dictionary, Aquilina’s (1987-‐
1990) bilingual dictionary, and Mifsud’s (1995a: 272-‐295) list of loan verbs that have been fully integrated into the root-‐and-‐pattern system of Maltese, a database of all con-‐
sonantal roots which give rise to one or more patterns was compiled in the form of a spreadsheet. A small extract from the database for tri-‐consonantal roots is reproduced in Table 4.1. A full listing of the data tabulated by root and pattern is given in Appendix I (tri-‐consonantal roots) & Appendix II (quadri-‐consonantal roots).
The database contains all the templatic verbs recorded in the mentioned works, without discriminating between dialectal, slang, bookish, current or dated forms. For instance, under the root √ktb one finds not only the verbs kiteb ‘I, write, enroll (v.t)’ and
inkiteb ‘VII, be written, enroll (v.i)’, which have a high frequency of use, but also the verb
tkieteb ‘VI, engage in mutual correspondence’, which has fallen out of use. I also added some templatic verbs, unrecorded in dictionaries of Maltese, which I came across in lit-‐
erary works (e.g., lajjem ‘II, slow down’, in Rużar Briffa’s poem Quo Vadis?) or heard other native speakers use (e.g., irħas ‘IX, become cheap’ for more common raħas ‘I, be-‐
come cheap’) or which I know as a native speaker (e.g., tmandar ‘QII, get wasted’).
Table 4.1 Extract from the database of roots and patterns
Root I II III V VI VII VIII IX X
krh kerrah tkerrah krieh stkerrah
krm korom *karrem *tkarrem nkaram
krr *kerr stkerr
krt karrat
ksb kiseb kisseb tkisseb nkiseb
ksħ kesaħ kessaħ tkessaħ
ksr kiser kisser tkisser nkiser
kss kess
ktb kiteb *kitteb tkieteb nkiteb
ktf kittef tkittef
In principle, it is also possible to compile an inventory of only the verbal lexemes that an educated speaker of modern Maltese has. The list would be drastically reduced, with some roots appearing in fewer binyanim (e.g., under √sgħl one would list sagħal ‘I, cough’ but not the obsolete siegħel ‘III, cause one to cough’), and other roots being omit-‐
ted altogether (e.g., √kbx and √wrx deriving, among others, kebbex ‘be unfaithful’ and werrex ‘slap someone’s face’ respectively). Since at the time of compiling the database there was no reliable dictionary or language resource that provides categorization of lexemes on the basis of their usage, it was not always easy to decide, for instance, which forms are current and which are dated.1 With such resources in hand, it is possible to replicate the exercise, providing additional results in terms of the usage and the fre-‐
quency of use of the lexemes. A few verbs, which dictionaries mark as unused, obsolete
1 Carrying corpus studies would certainly help make such usage-‐based decisions. However, because of the normative nature of writing, a number of verbs, being dialectal, tend to be used more often in the spoken rather than in the written language. The present lack of corpora of spoken Maltese and dialectal Maltese clearly does not facilitate the undertaking of such a task.
or hypothetical are, however, entered in the database, marked by an asterisk, but are excluded from the calculations given here.
The discussion that follows is therefore based on an all-‐embracing database of templatic verbs, which add up to almost 4000 verbs derived from over 1900 different consonantal roots. A breakdown of the results is given in Table 4.2, which shows three things: the total number of tri-‐ and quadri-‐consonantal roots, the number of verbs de-‐
rived from both kinds of roots, and finally the mean number of patterns represented by root. One striking observation that comes out of this table is that there are numerous roots that are not used to form actual templatic verbs. Only 25% of all possible combi-‐
nations of tri-‐consonantal roots with binyanim are attested verbs in Maltese, leaving 9572 binyan slots empty. By contrast, quadri-‐consonantal roots exhibit much fewer gaps, creating 718 verbs, which make up 75% of the total number of possible combina-‐
tions of quadri-‐consonantal roots with binyan QI and binyan QII.
Table 4.2 Total consonantal roots and verbs they create
No. of Roots No. of verbs Mean patterns/root
Tri-‐consonantal 1424 3244 2.28
Quadri-‐consonantal 478 718 1.5
Total 1902 3962
Before presenting more results, a word is in order on the classification of homo-‐
phonous roots in the database. In all, there are around 400 homophonous roots, such as
√bjd1 bajjad ‘whitewash’, √bjd2 bied ‘lay eggs’, and √sfr1 sfar ‘turn yellow’, √sfr2 saffar
‘whistle’, √sfr3 siefer ‘travel’. They are usually the result of historical merges of different phonemes, in particular emphatic consonants with their non-‐emphatic counterparts (cf.
Aquilina 1970; Mifsud 2008; inter alia).
In general, it seems reasonable to have two (or more) separate entries for such roots both on etymological and semantic grounds. However, because a number of con-‐
sonantal roots are assigned multiple interpretations that are difficult to relate deriva-‐
tionally, at least synchronically (recall verbs like ħareġ ‘take out’, ħarreġ ‘train’ and stħarreġ ‘investigate’, which are all derived from the same root, √ħrġ), it is not always easy to tell apart cases of homophony from cases of multiple interpretations. In some studies, such as Borg (1981, 1988), verbs derived from two etymologically distinct
roots, like għalaq ‘close’ and għallaq ‘hang, strangle’, are treated on a par with verbs such as fetaħ ‘open’ and fettaħ ‘loosen’, which etymologically belong to the same root and which in this study are analyzed as multiple interpretations of one root. In relation to this, Fabri (2009: 4) writes:
It is not clear to what extent these forms (= binyanim) are productive in modern Maltese, and very little is known about native speaker intuitions about the relations between the members of a
‘family’. For example, to what extent does a native speaker see the verb għallaq ‘strangle’ as a sec-‐
ond form derivation of għalaq ‘close’, even though historically the two are unrelated (see Aquilina 1990: 954, 957)? In other words, it is not at all clear how psychologically real these families are to native speakers.
From this observation arises an interesting question concerning the semantic related-‐
ness of words sharing the same root consonants which may be of identical or different historical origin. However, this is an issue which requires psycholinguistic and corpus-‐
based research that makes use of such methods as the Latent Semantic Analysis (cf.
Landauer & Dumais 1997; Landauer et al. 1998; inter alia).
For the present purposes, it is important to avoid confusion between semantic un-‐
relatedness that is due to different etymologies, on the one hand, and tenuous semantic relations among verbs derived from the same root by virtue of the characteristic of con-‐
sonantal roots to be assigned multiple interpretations, on the other. For this reason, in line with Aquilina’s (1987-‐1990) dictionary, which points out the etymological sources of roots, homophonous roots are distinguished in the database by means of superscript numbers, such as √bjd1 and √bjd2.
4.1.2 Productivity of roots and patterns
There are a number of interesting ways to analyze the raw data in order to gain insights into how roots interact with patterns. In this section, I take a closer look at the database from three different yet related angles. I first examine the distribution of roots across different binyanim. Following that, I give a quantitative analysis of the morphological productivity of binyanim derived from tri-‐consonantal roots. Finally, I reinterpret these results in light of the binyanim’s preference for different root types, weak and strong, with the aim of determining the extent to which binyanim are conditioned by the mor-‐
phonological shape of the root.
Distribution of roots
Let us begin by looking at the frequencies for patterns per root. Table 4.3a shows the number of tri-‐consonantal roots that appear in different patterns. Very few roots are cast in more than two patterns: only a third of tri-‐consonantal roots appear in three or more patterns. It is striking that most of the roots appear in only one (27%) or two pat-‐
terns (40%), leaving a significantly large number of binyan slots empty. This means that a very large number of patterns are not used for creating actual templatic verbs .
Table 4.3a Actual number of patterns per tri-‐consonantal roots
Patterns/root 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
No. of roots 380 567 249 161 64 2 1
Percentage 26.69 39.82 17.49 11.31 4.49 0.14 0.07
The exercise was repeated for quadri-‐consonantal roots. The results, as summarized in Table 4.3b, show that a little more than half of the total of quadri-‐consonantal roots cre-‐
ate verbs in both patterns. The rest typically appear only in binyan QI, such as √gdwd gedwed ‘mutter’, √ħbrk ħabrek ‘strive’, √slpj salpa ‘sail’, etc. A much smaller number is cast only in QII, such as √gxtr tgexter ‘become unsociable’, √rnġj tranġa ‘be set right’.
The entire list of quadri-‐consonantal roots and the verbs derived from them is given in Appendix II.
Table 4.3b Actual number of patterns per quadri-‐consonantal roots
Patterns/root 1 2
No. of roots 238 240
Percentage 49.79 50.21
The rest of this chapter deals with the interrelations of tri-‐consonantal roots with patterns, leaving an in-‐depth analysis of quadri-‐consonantal roots and patterns to fu-‐
ture research. Let us now turn to the morphological productivity of the nine tri-‐
consonantal binyanim.
Morphological productivity of binyanim
A more interesting question concerns the morphological productivity of patterns. Say-‐
ing that a given binyan is productive does not mean that it is more often used for the production of neologisms or for the integration of loan verbs. Rather, in this subsection, I measure the profitability of the various binyanim in the lexicon; that is, the extent to which they are actively used. An analysis of patterns in terms of their availability re-‐
quires future psycholinguistic and corpus-‐based research.2 Research on Semitic lan-‐
guages along these lines has been carried out, among others, by Bolozky (1999) for Is-‐
raeli Hebrew and Verheij (2000) for Biblical Hebrew.
In Table 4.4, I give the productivity rates of the nine binyanim, indicated by Roman numerals. Over three fourths of the total number of tri-‐consonantal roots create verbs in binyan I, II and V. Another relatively productive pattern is VII, accommodating around 10% of tri-‐consonantal roots. The other patterns are virtually unproductive, with only 13% of the roots appearing in the five of them put together.
Table 4.4 Productivity of binyanim derived from tri-‐consonantal roots
Pattern I II III V VI VII VIII IX X
Frequency 696 994 102 790 137 337 91 73 24
% of roots 21.45 30.64 3.14 24.35 4.22 10.39 2.80 2.25 0.74
Here, binyanim were treated individually. In the next section, I tackle the interrelations among patterns on the basis of their co-‐occurrence on the same roots, thereby assess-‐
ing the degree to which the binyanim can be said to form a system. Before going into this analysis, however, let us study the relationship, if any, between the formal aspects of the root and the productivity of the patterns.
Binyanim and root types
Having looked at how roots are distributed across patterns and at the tendency of roots to combine with particular patterns, I now address the issue of possible preferences a given binyan might have for different root types.
In Sect. 2.2.1, roots were categorized into different types, drawing a main distinc-‐
2 In Sect. 2.4, I briefly discuss the distinction between the availability and profitability of templatic verbs in Maltese.
tion between strong and weak roots. While the consonants of strong roots are always audible and normally not affected by morphonological processes, weak roots have the glides /j/ or /w/ as one of their radicals, which are silent in some words, giving rise to
‘irregular’ forms. Strong roots were further subdivided into regular C1C2C3 and redupli-‐
cative C1C2C2. There are three different subtypes of weak roots, depending on the posi-‐
tion of the glide, in initial, medial or final position. As discussed in detail in Ch. 2, root types determine the syllabic structure of verbs and have an effect on their inflectional morphology. These five root types are summarized in Table 2.4, reproduced here with some minor changes as Table 4.5.
Table 4.5 The main types of tri-‐consonantal roots in Maltese
Root type Example(s) Verb(s) Meaning(s)
Strong regular √ktb kiteb write
reduplicative √xmm xamm smell
Weak initial √wħl, √jsr weħel, jassar stick, enslave
medial √dwr, √tjr dar, tar turn, fly
final √dgħw, √qrj dagħa, qara swear, read
Let us now look into the issue of whether the morphonological shape of the root, i.e. if it is strong or weak, puts a constraint on the selection of a binyan. If this were the case, then this would suggest that the distribution of binyanim is to some degree condi-‐
tioned by formal properties of the root.
To begin with, the total number of roots and the verbs they form are laid out in Ta-‐
ble 4.6 according to the root type.3 Two main observations can be drawn from this ta-‐
ble. First, over two thirds of the tri-‐consonantal roots in Maltese are strong, the major-‐
ity of which are regular rather than reduplicative. Second, around 27% of templatic verbs (excluding those formed from quadri-‐consonantal roots) are derived from weak tri-‐consonantal roots.
3 Note that one particular root, √wċċ, is grouped with reduplicative roots, but can instead be entered with weak-‐initial roots. Also note that the 12 irregular roots, i.e. the roots that for historical reasons have the first radical missing (e.g., √’ħd creating ħa ‘I, take’ and ittieħed ‘VI, be taken’), are classified with the strong regular roots, unless their last radical is a glide (e.g., √’dj forming idda ‘VIII, shine’), in which case they are listed with weak-‐final roots.
Table 4.6 Tri-‐consonantal roots and verbs they create grouped by root type
The chart reveals that:
• All binyanim have a high tendency to combine with strong regular roots, especially VI and VIII. The only exception is X, which shows an almost equal preference for regular, reduplicative and weak-‐final roots.
• Relatively speaking, reduplicative roots appear most frequently in X. They are em-‐
bedded frequently in I, II, V, VII and VIII, but almost never in III and VI.
• Weak-initial roots never appear in VIII and hardly ever in I and VII. They are rela-‐
tively more commonly cast in II, III, V, VI and X.
• Binyan III, VI and VIII do not generally accommodate weak-medial roots, which tend to interleave with II, V, IX and X.
• In proportion to all types, weak-final roots combine most frequently with III and X.
It is relatively common for this root type to be inserted in I, VI and VII, but not in II, V and IX.4
• Binyan III and VI tend to combine with regular and weak-‐final roots, and are underrepresented on the other three root types.
• It is more often that binyan II, V and IX combine with regular and weak-‐medial roots than with other root types. However, II and V also show a relative preference for reduplicative roots.
4 There is only one weak-‐final root which combines with IX, √ħlw, creating ħliel ‘become sweet’, where the root is reanalyzed as a reduplicative one, with the final glide turning into a liquid.
These findings suggest that there is some morphological conditioning of binyanim by root type, which can be couched in terms of (dis)preferences. While regular roots generally combine with all binyanim, reduplicative roots have a strong dispreference for III and VI. The combination of weak-‐initial roots with I, VII and VIII is dispreferred or even not attested. There is a relatively low number of verbs formed by the combina-‐
tion of weak-‐medial roots and binyan III, VI and VIII, on the one hand, and of weak-‐final roots and binyan II, V and IX, on the other. These observations are summarized in Table 4.8.
Table 4.8 (Dis)preferences of combinations of root types and binyanim
Patterns Preferred type Example Dispreferred type
I, VII, VIII R. √xħt W-‐I
Red. √sdd
II, V, IX R. √ċkn W-‐I
W-‐M √twl W-‐F
III, VI R. √ħrs Red.
W-‐F √vrj W-‐M
X R. √nbħ W-‐I
Red. √knn
W-‐F √ħbj
4.1.3 Co-‐occurrence of patterns
We have, so far, examined the binyanim separately, observing that, among other things, I, II and V are the predominant patterns in the system, and that VII, although much smaller, is still considerably larger than the other five binyanim, which together ac-‐
commodate only 13% of all tri-‐consonantal roots. In this section, I analyze the patterns as one system by looking at the relations between binyanim, especially in terms of their co-‐occurrence on the same roots.
Table 4.9 gives the frequencies of roots appearing in only two binyanim. When a root combines with two patterns, there is a very high chance it selects II and V, e.g.,
√wtq, wettaq ‘implement’, twettaq ‘be implemented’. It is also relatively frequent for
roots creating two binyanim to appear in I and VII, e.g., √bdj, beda ‘begin’, inbeda ‘be begun’. Other less frequent combinations include I and II, e.g., √għlj, għola ‘go up (prices)’, għolla ‘put up (prices)’, and III and VI, as √ħrs, ħares ‘protect’, tħares ‘be pro-‐
roots creating two binyanim to appear in I and VII, e.g., √bdj, beda ‘begin’, inbeda ‘be begun’. Other less frequent combinations include I and II, e.g., √għlj, għola ‘go up (prices)’, għolla ‘put up (prices)’, and III and VI, as √ħrs, ħares ‘protect’, tħares ‘be pro-‐