A computational grammar and lexicon for Maltese

Maltese today is still Semitic in origin, but differs considerably from other neo-Arabic languages
as it has been heavily influenced by Romance languages and English. It is the national
language of the Republic of Malta, and its official language together with English. Since 2004,
Maltese has also been an official language of the European Union. Maltese is spoken by 90%
of the roughly 400,000 inhabitants of the Maltese islands, as well as by some smaller expatriate
groups around the world.
1.1.2 Overview
This section provides a very brief overview of the Maltese language. For complete, in-depth descriptions
of the language refer to Azzopardi (2007), Brother Henry F.S.C. (1980) and to Spagnol
(2011) for an in-depth look at morphology.
Alphabet
Maltese is the only Semitic language to use a Latin alphabet, with some minor additions. The
complete alphabet consists of 30 letters (including two digraphs), split into 6 vowels and 24
consonants:
a b ċ d e f ġ g għ h ħ i ie j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x ż z
The vowels in Maltese are: a e i ie o u. Vowels at the ends of words sometimes take the
grave accent, for example università (‘university’) and Ġesù (‘Jesus’). The circumflex can used to
indicate vowel length as in sâb (‘he found’), but is in general omitted in standard orthography.
All consonants are considered strong/sound (sħaħ), with the exception of j and w which are
weak (dgħajfin). The coronal consonants (konsonanti xemxin; opposite: qamrin) are the subset
which assimilate with the article: ċ d n r s t x ż z. The liquid consonants (or sonorants
(Fabri, 2009)) are those which assimilate with a prefixed ‘n’: l m n r. Together with għ, the
liquids require the addition of epenthetic vowels during conjugation.
Morphology
Nouns inflect for number, which can be singular, dual, collective, or plural (though all forms
tend not to exist together). Animate nouns also inflect for gender (e.g. spiżjar/spiżjara, ‘male/female
pharmacist’), while others have an intrinsic gender. Plurals may be either sound (external)
or broken (internal); some nouns have both, e.g. tapit (‘carpet’) → tapiti, twapet (‘carpets’).
Adjectives behave similarly to nouns, but have only a singular and plural (which is often
broken as in the case of nouns). They have positive form, a comparative which may be formed
either morphologically or syntactically, and a superlative obtained by prefixing the definite
article: kbir (‘big’), ikbar (‘bigger’), l-ikbar (‘the largest’).
Verbs inflect for tense (mood/aspect), person (P1 sg/pl, P2 sg/pl, P3 sg m/f, P3 pl) and
polarity. They often take enclitic pronouns as direct and indirect objects. Many verbs have a
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