Abstract
Maltese gives evidence of a certain degree of permeability of word-class categories in the sense that finite (intransitive) verbs in the 3rd person imperfective of both genders and numbers may function as NP-internal attributes and thus behave like adjectives, albeit only to a limited extent. The focus is on a small selection of those verbs which are typical representatives of the attributive functions of imperfectives. It is shown that in attribution members of this class of verbs undergo decategorialization, i.e. they lose typical properties of their original word class. In this context, the relation of pseudo-adjectival verbs, relative clauses, and bona fide adjectives is discussed in some detail. It is argued that pseudo-adjectival verbs are similar to active participles, which they replace in the case of the majority of the Maltese verbs which lack the ability of deriving active participles morphologically.
Dedicated to Bernard Comrie in gratitude of his continual support of the cause of Maltese Linguistics
Acknowledgments
This study is based on the talk we delivered on occasion of the farewell colloquium the International Association of Maltese Linguistics (GĦiLM) organized for Bernard Comrie on 30 April, 2015 at the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig/Germany. The many thought-provoking comments of our audience have made us reconsider several of the issues we raised in the preliminary version of this paper. We are grateful to Manfred Krug and Chris Lucas not only for accepting our contribution on this special issue but also for generously extending the deadline twice. We are equally indebted to our Maltese colleagues Sandra Abela, Albert Borg, Sandro Caruana, Albert Friggieri, Luke Galea, Manwel Mifsud, and Sandra Vella for answering so expertly to our questionnaire. Bernard Comrie, Ray Fabri, and Benjamin Saade deserve a word of thanks too since they commented on some of our original ideas and/or checked the MLRS for us. Chris Lucas and an anonymous reviewer subjected the draft version of this paper to a thorough reading. Their critical remarks helped us to remedy a number of flaws of our original line of argumentation. These many helpers notwithstanding, we assume the exclusive responsibility for the contents and the form of this paper.
Abbreviations
- abs
absolutive
- actv
active
- adj
adjective
- adv
adverb
- aux
auxiliary
- caus
causative
- coll
collective
- comp
comparative
- conj
conjunction
- def
definite
- dem
demonstrative
- dis
distal
- do
direct object
- f
feminine
- imperf
imperfective
- io
indirect object
- lex
lexical
- lig
ligature
- LPP
Le Petit Prince
- m
masculine
- MLRS
Maltese Language Resource Server
- N
noun
- neg
negation
- NP
noun phrase
- num
numeral
- obj
(direct) object
- pass
passive
- past
past tense
- PAV
pseudo-adjectival verb
- perf
perfective
- pl
plural
- PP
prepositional phrase
- pret
preterit
- prox
proximal
- ptcpl
participle
- RC
relative clause
- red
reduplication
- refl
reflexive
- rel
relativizer
- S
sentence
- SAP
speech-act participant(s)
- sg
singular
- subord
subordinator
- superl
superlative
- TMA
tense-mood-aspect
- V
verb
- vblz
verbalizer
- VP
verb phrase
Primary Sources
(a) printed matter
Busbies – Carmel G. Cauchi. 1997. F’Ħal Busbies ma’ Mastru Gerfex. Blata l-Bajda: Merlin Library.
Darbtejn – Charles Casha. 1996. Darbtejn insiru tfal. Blata l-Bajda: Merlin Library.
Gerfex – Carmel G. Cauchi. 1999. Dak l-imbierek Mastru Gerfex. Blata l-Bajda: Merlin Library.
Gulliver – Annamaria Ciarlò. 1997. L-istorja ta’ Gulliver u stejjer oħra. Valletta: Klabb Kotba Maltin.
Iebsa – Lino Psaila. 1996. Il-baħar rasu iebsa. Valletta: Klabb Kotba Maltin.
Isem – Clare Azzopardi. 2014. Kulħadd ħalla isem warajh. Blata l-Bajda: Merlin.
LPP – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry [translator: Toni Aquilina]. 2000. Iċ-Ċkejken Prinċep. L-Imsida: Mireva.
Paceville – Frans Sammut. 1991. Paceville. Blata l-Bajda: Merlin Library.
Praspar – Carmel G. Cauchi. 1990. Il-praspar ta’ Mastru Gerfex. Blata l-Bajda: Merlin Library.
Samuraj – Frans Sammut. 1991. Samuraj. Blata l-Bajda: Merlin Library.
Trogloditi – Charles Casha. 2008. Il-prinċep u t-trogloditi. Santa Venera: Klabb Kotba Maltin.
(b) electronic
References
Aquilina, Joseph. 1987. Maltese-English dictionary. Volume 1: A–L. Malta: Midesea Books.Search in Google Scholar
Aquilina, Joseph. 1990. Maltese-English dictionary. Volume 2: M–Z and addenda. Malta: Midsea Books.Search in Google Scholar
Aquilina, Joseph. 1999. English-Maltese dictionary. 4 vols. Malta: Midsea Books.Search in Google Scholar
Bhat, D.N.S. 1994. The adjectival category: Criteria for differentiation and identification. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.24Search in Google Scholar
Borg, Albert. 1988. Ilsienna. Studju grammatikali. Ħas-Sajjied: L-awtur.Search in Google Scholar
Borg, Albert. 1996. The structure of the noun phrase in Maltese. Rivista di Linguistica 8(1). 5–28.Search in Google Scholar
Borg, Albert & Marie Azzopardi-Alexander. 1997. Maltese. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Camilleri, Maris. 2012a. The Maltese relative clause: A source of standard-dialect variation. Ilsienna 2. 1–12.Search in Google Scholar
Camilleri, Maris. 2012b. The Maltese restrictive relative clause. In Albert Borg, Sandro Caruana & Alexandra Vella (eds.), Perspectives on Maltese linguistics, 161–200. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.10.1524/9783050065144.161Search in Google Scholar
Cann, Ronnie, Ruth Kempson & Lutz Marten. 2005. The dynamics of language: An introduction. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Search in Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1982. Syntactic-morphological discrepancies in Maltese sentence structure. Communication & Cognition 15(3/4). 281–306.10.1007/978-1-4613-2727-1_1Search in Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 2002. Rethinking relative clause types: The Mediterranean area. In Paolo Ramat & Thomas Stolz (eds.), Mediterranean languages, 87–98. Bochum: Brockmeyer.Search in Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 2009. Maltese and the World Atlas of Language Structures. In Bernard Comrie et al. (eds.), Introducing Maltese linguistics, 3–11. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.113.04comSearch in Google Scholar
Cristofaro, Sonia & Anna Giacalone Ramat 2002. Relativization patterns in Mediterranean languages, with particular reference to the relativization of time circumstantials. In Paolo Ramat & Thomas Stolz (eds.), Mediterranean languages, 99–112. Bochum: Brockmeyer.Search in Google Scholar
Croft, William. 1991. Syntactic categories and grammatical relations. The cognitive organization of information. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Dixon, R. M. W. 2010. Basic linguistic theory. Vol. 2: Grammatical topics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Fabri, Ray. 1993. Kongruenz und die Grammatik des Maltesischen. Tübingen: Niemeyer.10.1515/9783111355795Search in Google Scholar
Gil, David. 2005. Genitives, adjectives, and relative clauses. In Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds.), The World atlas of language structures, 246–249. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 2001. Syntax. vol. 1. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Search in Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd. 1997. Possession. Cognitive sources, forces, and grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511581908Search in Google Scholar
Krug, Manfred, Lisa Bonnici & Michaela Hilbert 2012. Maltese English. In Bernd Kortmann & Kerstin Linkenheimer (eds.), The Mouton world atlas of variation in English, 653–668. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110280128.653Search in Google Scholar
Launey, Michel. 2011. An introduction to Classical Nahuatl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511778001Search in Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 1984. Der Relativsatz. Typologie seiner Strukturen, Theorie seiner Funktionen, Kompendium seiner Grammatik. Tübingen: Narr.Search in Google Scholar
Lucas, Christopher. 2014. Indefinites and negative concord in Maltese: Towards a dynamic account. In Albert Borg, Sandro Caruana & Alexandra Vella (eds.), Perspectives on Maltese linguistics, 225–248. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.10.1524/9783050065144.225Search in Google Scholar
Peterson, John. 2009. “Pseudo-verbs”: An analysis of non-verbal (co-)predication in Maltese. In Bernard Comrie, Ray Fabri, Elizabeth Hume, Manwel Mifsud, Thomas Stolz & Martine Vanhove (eds.), Introducing Maltese linguistics, 181–204. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.113.13petSearch in Google Scholar
Pustet, Regina. 1989. Die Morphosyntax des “Adjektivs” im Sprachvergleich. Frankfurt am Main: Lang.Search in Google Scholar
Rijkhoff, Jan. 2002. The noun phrase. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198237822.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Stassen, Leon. 2005. Predicative adjectives. In Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds.), The World atlas of language structures, 478–481. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Stolz, Thomas. 2011. The possessive relative clause in Maltese. In Sandro Caruana, Ray Fabri & Thomas Stolz (eds.), Variation and change. The dynamics of Maltese in space, time and society, 183–232. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.10.1524/9783050057200.183Search in Google Scholar
Stolz, Thomas, Sonja Kettler, Cornelia Stroh & Aina Urdze. 2008. Split possession. An areal-linguistic study of the alienability correlation and related phenomena in the languages of Europe. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.101Search in Google Scholar
Stolz, Thomas, Cornelia Stroh & Aina Urdze. 2011. Total reduplication. The areal linguistics of a potential universal. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.10.1524/9783050050973Search in Google Scholar
Vanhove, Martine. 1993. La langue maltaise. Etudes syntaxiques d’un dialecte arabe «périphérique». Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Search in Google Scholar
Wetzer, Harrie. 1996. The typology of adjectival predication. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110813586Search in Google Scholar
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
