With this volume, we honor the contribution of our colleague and friend, Thomas Stolz, to Maltese linguistics and to the cause of the Maltese language in general. This is a daunting task, considering the breadth of Thomas’s work on Maltese and especially taking into account the fact that there are actually two Thomases to be honored.
The first one is of course Thomas the linguist, the one who has in the last twenty-five years brought his typological knowledge and analytical skill to bear on various aspects of Maltese grammar. Any reader of Thomas’s work will immediately notice and be impressed by his attention to detail, his meticulous engagement with data and his love for the Maltese language. Nowhere does this come across better than in his papers written in those dark ages before the availability of large-scale corpora, where Thomas collects data for his analysis by reading hundreds of pages of literary texts, all the while deriving new insights and new questions. As is custom, this volume contains a selected list of publications written by the honoree (though we had to limit ourself to a few select ones, primarily for reasons of space). This list, along with the papers contained within this volume, bear witness to the impact Thomas’s work has had on the study of Maltese and his participation in the progress the field has made in the last two decades.
Yet Thomas’s contributions to the cause of the Maltese language extend beyond his linguistic work. And so the second Thomas we honor here is Thomas the co-founder and the president of The International Association of Maltese Linguistics - Għaqda Internazzjonali tal-Lingwistika Maltija. The Għaqda was founded with the stated goal of disentangling Maltese from the knotted web of Arabic dialectology and establishing Maltese as an independent subject of scientific inquiry. Under Thomas’s leadership, it has not only succeeded, but also grown to become the nexus of linguistic research on Maltese. This is not limited to the Għaqda’s biennial conference and the proceedings volume resulting from it; the ideas exchanged and the relationships built under the auspices of the Għaqda have resulted in countless publications, collaborations, and dissertations (mine included), all to the benefit of Maltese linguistics and Maltese in general. All of that is the result of efforts inspired and led by Thomas.
The Latin words in the title of this Festschrift - which translate to ‘which I put down here in the Maltese language’ - can be found in a manuscript stored in the vaults of the National Archive in Valletta. The ‘which’ (quam) they announce is nothing less than Il-Kantilena, the oldest known literary text in Maltese. I found the Latin phrase fitting for the purpose of this volume: as it introduces the text that marks the change in the fortunes of the Maltese language, so it shall do the same for a collection of papers that honor a man who has changed the fortunes of Maltese linguistics.
Ad multos annos u niżżik ħajr, Thomas!
Slavomír Čéplö, Bratislava