2.2 Root-and-pattern morphology
2.2.3 Inflection of templatic verbs
phology remains arbitrary. On the other hand, if we take morphology to be a reflection of syntac-‐
tic processes, the relation between binyanim and the syntactic properties of verbs appearing in them is not only accidental, but expected.
In addition, in a study centered on Maltese verbs, Borg & Mifsud (1999) raise a number of problems regarding Aronoff’s treatment of the binyanim as inflectional classes. They argue for the derivational status of the Maltese binyanim on the basis of a number of criteria such as the gaps in the system, the semantic non-‐transparency of the binyanim, the relative order of morphemes (derivational ones are central in the word, inflectional ones are added laterally in the form of prefixes and suffixes), and the change in word class (as when a verb, e.g., tħanżer ‘make a pig of oneself’, xemmex ‘ex-‐
pose to the sun’, is derived from a nominal, ħanżir ‘pig’, xemx ‘sun’).
As shown in Ch. 4, verbs have some degree of morphological freedom in their choice of binyan morpheme. Inchoative verbs, for instance, may appear in different binyanim: I għala ‘boil, v.i’, V tgħawweġ ‘bend, v.i’, VII inkiser ‘break, v.i’, VIII ftaqar ‘become poor’, IX krieh ‘become ugly’, X stgħana ‘become rich’. The derivational nature of the binyanim is also compatible with this variation in morphological marking.
In conclusion, on all accounts it is safe to say that the Maltese binyanim belong to the domain of derivation.29 The derivational relations between verbal patterns are taken up in Ch. 3 and Ch. 4, where the binyanim are not analyzed in isolation, but rather in their interaction with roots and other binyanim.
2.2.3 Inflection of templatic verbs
Each binyan may be inflected for tense-‐aspect (perfective, imperfective), mood (indica-‐
tive, imperative), person (first, second, third), number (singular, plural for each of the three persons), and, for the third person singular, gender (masculine, feminine). That makes about 16 different word forms in each binyan, excluding verbs with direct and indirect object enclitics (e.g., kitib=ha ‘he wrote it’; kitib=li ‘he wrote to me’; kitib=hie=li
‘he wrote it for me’, etc.), which add up to a few hundred word forms.
Verb inflection is concatenative, with prefixation and suffixation to a stem-‐base. The main tense-‐aspect distinction is between the perfective, formed by suffixes, and the im-‐
perfective, formed by prefixes to mark person and gender and suffixes to mark plural
29 Other studies on Semitic languages, such as Horvath (1981) on Hebrew, also conclude that binyanim are derivational.
(cf. Borg 1981, 1988; Fabri 1995; Ebert 2000; Spagnol 2007, 2009 for discussion on the tense-‐aspect system in Maltese).
Table 2.8 provides the paradigms for the imperfective and perfective forms of two strong regular binyan I verbs, kiteb and xorob. The latter, having a liquid/nasal-‐medial radical, displays a slightly different imperfective paradigm: in the plural, an epenthetic vowel is inserted immediately before the liquid or nasal consonant, giving rise to the CV structure vCvCC (-ixorb-) rather than vCCC (-iktb-).30 The perfective paradigm of liq-‐
uid/nasal-‐medial verbs, however, is identical to that of strong regular verbs. Also, note the syncretism of the second-‐person and third-‐person singular feminine in the imper-‐
fective, and of the first-‐ and second-‐person singular in the perfective.
illustrated in Table 2.9.34 This final vowel distinction is important in the redistribution of Romance loan verbs within the class of templatic verbs (cf. Sect. 2.3.2).
Table 2.9 Paradigms of weak-‐final mexa ‘walk’ and qara ‘read’
Imperfective Perfective Imperfective Perfective
1SG n-imxi imx-ejt n-aqra qr-ajt
2SG t-imxi imx-ejt t-aqra qr-ajt
3SG.M j-imxi mexa j-aqra qara
3SG.F t-imxi imx-iet t-aqra qr-at
1PL n-imx-u imx-ejna n-aqr-aw qr-ajna
2PL t-imx-u imx-ejtu t-aqr-aw qr-ajtu
3PL j-imx-u imx-ew j-aqr-aw qr-aw
The perfective forms of weak-‐final verbs, especially the first and second persons, may be analyzed in the same way as strong regular verbs (cf. √ktb 1SG ktib-t and √mxj 1SG imxej-t). However, in Table 2.9 they are analyzed as perfective stems plus a different set of suffixes (imx-ejt, imx-iet, etc.). This morphemic analysis, whereby the final weak radical loses its radical status and comes to form part of the inflectional suffix, is moti-‐
vated by the manner the weak-‐final inflection has been extended, either completely or partially, to other verb classes, including reduplicative (e.g., ħass ‘feel’) and silent-‐final (e.g., sema’ ‘hear’) verbs, as well as to all concatenative verbs (cf. Sect. 2.3). As is evident from Table 2.10, reduplicative and silent-‐final verbs take the weak-‐final perfective suf-‐
fixes in the first and second persons.
The weak-‐final inflection has also been extended to other anomalous forms, such as verbs derived from roots with some missing consonant (ġie ‘come’, ra ‘see’) and to some verbs that end in a super-‐heavy syllable, i.e. long vowel plus consonant (għam
‘swim’, biegħ ‘sell’, strieħ ‘rest’), which have defective perfective paradigms (cf. Mifsud 1995a: 316-‐317; Spagnol 2009: 66).
It has also gained ground with a few verbs whose roots have a stop and a fricative for second and third radicals, such as √ftx, fittex ‘seek’. In an effort to stabilize an anomalous stem by reducing allomorphy (-‐fittex, -‐fittx-‐, fittix-‐, fittx-‐), the weak-‐final suf-‐
34 A handful of verbs such as nesa ‘forget’ and beda ‘begin’ end in -a in the imperfective (e.g., n-insa ‘IPFV.1SG-‐
forget’) but in -‐ejt (not -‐ajt) in the perfective (e.g., ins-ejt ‘forget-‐ PFV.1SG’).
fixes attach to an invariable stem (fittx-‐), yielding fittx-ejt ‘seek-‐pfv.1sg’ (for fittix-t), fittx-ejtu ‘seek-‐pfv.2pl’ (for fittix-tu), and so on (cf. Mifsud 1995a: 315-‐317). And, as mentioned above, the weak-‐final inflection is used for all concatenatively formed verbs.
In sum, templatic verbs have two sets of inflectional affixes which stand in complemen-‐
tary distribution, and which for ease of reference we may term strong affixes (-t, -na, -tu, etc., cf. Table 2.8) and weak affixes (-ejt, -ejna, -ejtu, etc., cf. Table 2.9).35
Table 2.10 Paradigms of reduplicative ħass ‘feel’ and silent-‐final sema’ ‘hear’
Imperfective Perfective Imperfective Perfective
1SG in-ħoss ħass-ejt n-isma’ sm-ajt
2SG t-ħoss ħass-ejt t-isma’ sm-ajt
3SG.M j-ħoss ħass j-isma’ sema’
3SG.F t-ħoss ħass-et t-isma’ semgħ-et
1PL in-ħoss-u ħass-ejna n-isimgħ-u sm-ajna
2PL t-ħoss-u ħass-ejtu t-isimgħ-u sm-ajtu
3PL j-ħoss-u ħass-ew/-u 36 j-isimgħ-u semgħ-u
Mifsud (1994; 1995a: 296-‐318) attributes the ever-‐increasing importance of the weak affixes to three formal reasons. First, the shape of some of the verbs that took on the weak affixes coincides with that of weak-‐final verbs. For instance, binyan I redupli-‐
cative verbs (e.g., ħall ‘untie’) coincide with binyan II weak-‐final verbs (e.g., ħall-a
‘leave’), so much so that their paradigms are in part similar (e.g., ħall-ejt translates both as ‘untie.PFV.1SG’ and ‘leave.PFV.1SG’). Second, in contrast to strong affixes, most of which begin with a consonant, all weak affixes are vowel-‐released (e.g., -‐ejt, -‐ejna), and as such can be more easily applied to verbal stems ending with a consonant cluster, like those of reduplicative verbs and many concatenative verbs (e.g., ipprogramm-‐ ‘program’, irre-
golarizz- ‘regularize’). The third characteristic of weak affixes that makes them a more likely model for the integration of other verb classes is stem regularity. While allomor-‐
phic stem alternation is a typical feature of strong affixes (cf. Table 2.8), the stem weak
35 This distinction applies to quadri-‐consonantal verbs too. Compare, for instance, strong ħarbat ‘confuse’
(e.g., ħarbat-t ‘confuse-‐PFV.1SG’) with weak-‐final kanta ‘sing’ (e.g., kant-ajt ‘sing-‐PFV.1SG’).
36 There are two variants for the perfective suffixes of reduplicative verbs in the third-‐person plural: -u as in strong regular verbs, and -ew as in weak-‐final verbs. Mifsud (1994: 251-‐252) observes that the latter suffix is gradually replacing the -u suffix. In general, when some verbs have both forms, the -u suffix is used only in some fossilized expressions.
affixes attach to is not subjected to allomorphic alternations, except for stress shift and regular morphophonemic alternations thereby conditioned (cf. Mifsud 1995a: 206-‐
210).
For further discussion on verb inflection in Maltese, see Cremona (1961), Mifsud (1995a), Borg & Azzopardi-‐Alexander (1997), Fabri (2009), inter alia. The inflection of concatenative verbs is briefly discussed in the next section.
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.