Grammatical Gender In Maltese

Download or read book Grammatical Gender in Maltese written by George Farrugia and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-09-10 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is grammatical gender merely stored as a syntactic property of nouns, or is it computed according to a noun’s semantic, morphological and phonological properties every time it is required? In many languages, gender appears to resist systematic treatment and can even cause problems for non-native learners. Native speakers of these languages appear to have no difficulty in assigning the correct grammatical gender to thousands of nouns in their language. Being an offshoot of Arabic, Maltese inherited a system comprising two gender categories, masculine and feminine. Numerous nouns were introduced in Maltese through contact with Sicilian and subsequently with Italian, two languages that also have a masculine/feminine-based gender system. However, the more recent contact, with English, seems to have complicated matters. This work investigates how grammatical gender functions in Maltese, how native speakers apply different criteria to classify nouns, and how this choice is reflected in syntactic agreement. It also takes into consideration the wider psycholinguistic context that influences the choice of category, and provides valuable data for theories that seek to explain the linguistic categorization of nouns in various languages.

Download or read book Grammatical Gender in Maltese written by George Farrugia and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-09-10 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is grammatical gender merely stored as a syntactic property of nouns, or is it computed according to a noun’s semantic, morphological and phonological properties every time it is required? In many languages, gender appears to resist systematic treatment and can even cause problems for non-native learners. Native speakers of these languages appear to have no difficulty in assigning the correct grammatical gender to thousands of nouns in their language. Being an offshoot of Arabic, Maltese inherited a system comprising two gender categories, masculine and feminine. Numerous nouns were introduced in Maltese through contact with Sicilian and subsequently with Italian, two languages that also have a masculine/feminine-based gender system. However, the more recent contact, with English, seems to have complicated matters. This work investigates how grammatical gender functions in Maltese, how native speakers apply different criteria to classify nouns, and how this choice is reflected in syntactic agreement. It also takes into consideration the wider psycholinguistic context that influences the choice of category, and provides valuable data for theories that seek to explain the linguistic categorization of nouns in various languages.

Download or read book Shifts and Patterns in Maltese written by Gilbert Puech and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The linguistic description of Maltese has experienced an invigorating renaissance in the last ten years. As an Arabic language with a heavily mixed lexicon, Maltese serves as a laboratory for questions of linguistic variation on all linguistics levels, bilingualism, and language contact. This present volume showcases the variety of up-to-date linguistic research on Maltese. Starting with a tribute to the late David Cohen, influential French Semiticist, the remainder of the book is divided into three parts: Phonology, Morphology & Syntax, and Contact, Bilingualism & Technology. The papers in the phonology section comprise a minimalist representation of Maltese sounds from Gilbert Puech, a detailed account of phonological changes in Maltese based on onomastic data by Andrei Avram, and the description of lengthening as a discourse strategy by Alexandra Vella et. al. The section on morphology and syntax includes both synchronic and diachronic approaches to variation in Maltese. Maris Camilleri provides a detailed formal account of the paradigm in Maltese verbal inflection using a multidimensional model which accounts for subcategorization frame variation. Döhla's contribution traces the development of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Maltese and draws parallels between similar phenomena in other varieties of Arabic. Wilmsen provides a detailed history of the polar interrogative marker –š in Maltese. The article by Stolz & Saade investigates the variation between long and short independent pronouns in Maltese taking into account phonological factors, text-type, and grammatical person. Lucas & Spagnol tackle the variation of Maltese numerals with respect to phonological and morphological criteria in their study of the connecting /t/. The section on Contact, Bilingualism & Technology starts with Farrugia's description of variation in the assignment of gender for loanwords in Maltese. Comrie & Spagnol place the make-up of the borrowed part of the Maltese lexicon in a wider typology of loanwords in the world's languages. The study by Azzopardi-Alexander gives detailed insights into bilingual practices in Malta, placing usage patterns on a continuum between single language use and different code-switching and code-mixing practices. In the final paper, John Camilleri shows how the computational modelling of Maltese grammar has both theoretical and practical repercussions for the study and teaching of Maltese. As can be gathered from the wide variety of topics presented in this volume, Maltese Linguistics has developed from a subdiscipline of Arabic linguistics to a full academic subject in its own right. This volume presents an ideal introduction to the wide range of linguistic topics Maltese has to offer.

Download or read book Maltese Linguistics on the Danube written by Slavomír Čéplö and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a dozen papers on various aspects of Maltese, relevant also for the study of related languages and general descriptive and typological linguistics. The diachronic section begins with an analysis of the place of Maltese in its North African context (Souag). Avram and van Putten then provide analyses of the development of Maltese phonological inventory, the former discussing obstruent devoicing, the latter tracing the evolution of Maltese short vowels. Sumikazu examines a type of circumstantial clause in Maltese and the section concludes with a description of a digital etymological lexicon of Maltese (Gatt). Turning to syntax, Borg and Amaira analyze agreement mismatch in a number of syntactic constructions, Fabri discusses argument extension and Čéplö and Lucas examine the role of the focus particle lanqas in Maltese negation. Stolz and Levkovych provide a thorough analysis of the syntax and semantics of Maltese prepositions, while Schmidt, Vorholt and Witt offer a quantitative study of their distribution and use. Closing out the volume, Alexander examines in detail the phonetics of Maltese affricated stops, while Ellul and Galea analyze the epenthetic vowel alternation in the Maltese definite article.

Download or read book Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Teaching Foreign Languages in Multilingual Settings written by Anna Krulatz and published by Channel View Publications. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book promotes linguistically responsive foreign language teaching practices in multilingual contexts by facilitating a dialogue between teachers and researchers. It advances a discussion of how to connect the acquisition of subsequent foreign languages with previous language knowledge to create culturally and linguistically inclusive foreign language classrooms, and how to strengthen the connection between research on multilingualism and foreign language teaching practice. The chapters present new approaches to foreign language instruction in multilingual settings, many of them forged in collaboration between foreign language teachers and researchers of multilingualism. The authors report findings of classroom-based research, including case studies and action research on topics such as the functions and applications of translanguaging in the foreign language classroom, the role of learners’ own languages in teaching additional languages, linguistically and culturally inclusive foreign language pedagogies, and teacher and learner attitudes to multilingual teaching approaches.

Download or read book Introducing Maltese Linguistics written by Bernard Comrie and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meltese Linguistics offers the general linguist a wide range if still largely unexplored areas of study. This collection of articles highlights a selection of on- going research projects in phonological, morphological and syntactic issues.

Download or read book Morphologies in Contact written by Martine Vanhove and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-12-04 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of articles takes up the issue of Contact Morphology raised by David Wilkins in 1996. In the majority of contact-related studies, morphology is at best a marginal topic. According to the extant borrowing hierarchies, bound morphology is copied only rarely, if at all, because morphological copies presuppose long-term intensive contact with prior massive borrowing of content words and function words. On the other hand, especially in studies of morphological change, contact is often identified as the decisive factor which triggers the disintegration of morphological systems. However, it remains to be seen whether these two standard treatments of morphology in contact situations exhaust the phenomenology of Contact Morphology. The 14 papers of the present volume shed new light on the behavior of morphology under the conditions of language contact. Fresh empirical data from 40 languages world-wide are presented and new theory-based concepts are discussed. Morphologies in Contact is a first in the history of both morphology and language contact studies. It is meant to mark the beginning of an international research program which explores the entire range of aspects connected to morphologies in contact and thus, paves the way for a full-blown Contact Morphology qua linguistic discipline.