A computational grammar and lexicon for Maltese

2.2.2 Verb
The verb is arguably the most interesting aspect of Maltese morphology. As described in section
1.1.2, Maltese verbs can be divided more or less cleanly in two groups: those which follow
a Semitic root-and-pattern morphology, and those which display a concatenative morphology.
(Spagnol, 2011) Most of the work on morphology concerns the former group as their conjugations
are much more involved.
Etymologically, verbs in Maltese can roughly be divided into Semitic, Romance and English
origin. While all the Semitic verbs follow a root-and-pattern morphology, there is a division in
the Romance class of verbs. Some have become strongly-integrated into the root and pattern
system and behave as quadriliteral verbs. Examples include kanta (‘he sang’), vinċa (‘he won’)
and serva (‘he served’), from the Italian cantare, vincere and servire respectively. These are treated
as Semitic verbs as quadriliteral verbs with the weak j as final radical.
The remainder of Maltese verbs from Romance origin are only loosely-integrated and follow
a concatenative morphology of stems and affixes. Examples include żviluppa (‘he developed’),
ipperfezzjona (‘he perfected’), antagonizza (‘he antagonised’). The third group of verbs
have an English origin, and follow the same morphology as the loosely-integrated Romance
verbs, Examples include ibbukja (‘he booked’), ipparkja (‘he parked’), iffittja (‘he fitted’). Despite
their different etymology, these two latter groups behave identically from a morphological
perspective and thus are not distinguished between in the grammar; they are both treated generically
as loan verbs.
Classification
The classification of Maltese verbs is covered significantly elsewhere (Borg & Azzopardi-Alexander,
1997; Brother Henry F.S.C., 1980; Spagnol, 2011; Fabri, 2009). While broadly following this linguistic
tradition, we are also interested in keeping representations and compact efficient. Table
2.1 shows the verb classification as used in the resource grammar. The liquid-medial class corresponds
to Fabri’s ITb paradigm (Fabri, 2009) (where regular is ITa), which require an epenthetic
vowel to be inserted in the imperfective paradigm (Spagnol, 2011, p. 38). As noted but
Fabri (2009), għ is not weak, thus defective verbs are technically strong. However, they behave
inflectionally as weak verbs and are thus classified as such in our case.
Table 2.1: Verb classes and their characteristics
Class Description Example
Strong
Regular All radicals strong & distinct qatel (‘he killed’) ( √ QTL)
Liquid-medial C2 is liquid żelaq (‘he slipped’) ( √ żLQ)
Geminated C2 & C3 are identical ħabb (‘he loved’) ( √ ħBB)
Weak
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