Analogy in Contact: Modeling Maltese Plural Inflection
Sara Court Andrea D. Sims Micha Elsner
Maltese is often described as having a hybrid morphological system resulting
from extensive contact between Semitic and Romance language varieties. Such a
designation reflects an etymological divide as much as it does a larger
tradition in the literature to consider concatenative and non-concatenative
morphological patterns as distinct in the language architecture. Using a
combination of computational modeling and information theoretic methods, we
quantify the extent to which the phonology and etymology of a Maltese singular
noun may predict the morphological process (affixal vs. templatic) as well as
the specific plural allomorph (affix or template) relating a singular noun to
its associated plural form(s) in the lexicon. The results indicate phonological
pressures shape the organization of the Maltese lexicon with predictive power
that extends beyond that of a word's etymology, in line with analogical
theories of language change in contact.