A computational grammar and lexicon for Maltese

tie_V2 qafel - maqful
travel_V vvjaġġa - vvjaġġat
turn_V dar - mdawwar
understand_V2 fehem - mifhum
vomit_V qala’ - maqlugħ
wait_V2 stenna - mistenni
walk_V mexa miexi mmexxi
wash_V2 ħasel - maħsul
watch_V2 ra - -
win_V2 rebaħ - mirbuħ
wipe_V2 mesaħ - mimsuħ
wonder_VQ kkuntempla - kkuntemplat
write_V2 kiteb - miktub
B.3 Vowel changes
As in many languages, affixation in Maltese often causes vowel changes in the word stem. The
sections below cover some common ambiguous cases of this.
B.3.1
Object suffixes
Consider the inflected verb form rajna (‘we saw’) and the pronominal suffix -k indicating P2 sg.
as a direct object. According to (Brother Henry F.S.C., 1980, p. 166), whenever a verb ending
in -a has an enclitic pronoun suffixed to it, the joining vowel changes to an ie. Thus rajna + -k
→ rajniek (‘we saw you’). This rule is clearly established, despite the fact that based on how it
sounds as a native speaker a shorter-vowel spelling rajnik seems more natural.
Searching for both versions in the Maltese corpus, in fact, reveals that both forms appear
equally as often as each other. In general, looking at the frequency counts for tokens ending in
-jniek and -jnik, the former occurs 17 times and the latter 18 times.
A identical situation exists with enclitic pronouns for indirect objects too. Thus kantajna
+ -ilek → kantajnielek (‘we sang for you’), even though kantajnilek sounds like a more accurate
transcription of the spoken form. The corpus results are again split, reporting 11 occurrences
of tokens ending in jnielek, and 10 for jnilek. (Borg & Azzopardi-Alexander, 1997) claims the
former is correct, with an ie.
When combining both direct and indirect pronominal suffixes, one would expect the same
rule as above to apply. This would produce the forms rajniehulek (‘we saw it for you’) and
kantajniehulek (‘we sang it for you’). The corpus, however, contains exactly zero tokens which
end with iehulek, and a significant 92 which finish with ihulek. So in this case, the corpus results
seem to contradict the rule. Some personal communication on the ‘Kelmet il-Malti’ Facebook
group 1 seems to indicate that the rule cited above no longer applies, and the more natural
1 https://www.facebook.com/groups/246657308743181/, accessed 2012-08-29
82