A computational grammar and lexicon for Maltese

Verb : Type = {
s : VForm => VerbStems ;
i : VerbInfo ;
hasPresPart : Bool ;
hasPastPart : Bool ;
} ;
VerbStems : Type = {s1, s2, s3 : Str} ;
param
VForm = VPerf VAgr | VImpf VAgr | VImp Number | VActivePart GenNum | VPassivePart GenNum ;
VAgr = AgP1 Number | AgP2 Number | AgP3Sg Gender | AgP3Pl ;
where VerbInfo is a record type containing information about verb class, radicals and derived
form number.
The VForm parameter defines the different inflection forms that a verb may have, covering
the perfective and imperfective aspects and the imperative mood with corresponding subject
agreement features. In addition to these, we also include in the verb table the present and
past participle forms of the verb, which is common practice in the RGL. Since not all verbs
have these participles, we also include the two boolean fields hasPresPart and hasPastPart to
indicate their presence.
Rather than having a table from VForm into a string, we instead use the record of strings Verb-
Stems to contain the different stems that may be needed when the base verb form has enclitic
pronouns attached to it. For more information about this, refer to section 2.3.3.
Paradigms mkV is the smart paradigm for all non-derived verbs. This operator minimally
takes the mamma form of a verb and a root constructed with mkRoot in the case of root-andpattern
verbs. The root class is determined and the correct paradigm is applied. If no root is
specified as an argument, the verb is treated as a loan verb (with concatenative morphology).
Vowel changes are often hard to determine, thus the singular imperative form of a verb is often
required as a third argument. For irregular verbs, we can take all 16 forms (7 perfective, 7
imperfective, 2 imperative) together with class, derived form, root and vowel sequence. Verb
participles are specified not in the mkV operator but by using the supplementary operators pres-
PartV and pastPartV which add participles to already-constructed verbs. Derived verbs have
their own set of paradigms, as they are treated as separate entries in the lexicon. Examples are
given below:
Explanation
Geminate root-and-pattern verb
Requiring an extra form
Loan verb
Form II (derived) verb
Constructor
mkV "ħabb" (mkRoot "ħ-b-b")
mkV "talab" "itlob" (mkRoot "t-l-b")
mkV "pparkja"
mkV_II "daħħal" (mkRoot "d-ħ-l")
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