Lexical and grammatical aspect in Maltese

Abstract

This study is an investigation in the aspectual notions expressed in the verbal system of Maltese. The aim of the paper is twofold. First, it provides a characterization of verbs in Maltese in terms of lexical aspect as a monotonic compositional phenomenon expressed by a set of privative features. Second, it reviews the main analysis of grammatical aspect in Maltese, which has been often discussed in literature, incorporating and refining some of the intuitions presented in grammars. It proposes an analysis of these two main aspectual domains in Maltese, showing how they interact with each other, as well as with tense and modality. The first section introduces the topic of aspect, clarifying some of the confusing terminology and distinguishing between three forms of aspect. In section 2, I briefly review the literature on aspect in Maltese. After giving a description of lexical aspect and a characterization of the working theory of aspect in section 3, I go on to analyse in detail the five major lexical aspect classes in Maltese in section 4. Section 5 outlines grammatical aspect, and shows how it composes with lexical aspect. The last section summarizes the main results of the paper, and relates them to future linguistic research.