On the evolution of Maltese weak and geminate Form I verbs

Christopher Lucas (SOAS University of London)

Michael Spagnol (L-Università ta’ Malta)

Niamh Brown (SOAS University of London)

Abstract

This article charts the evolution of weak and geminate verbs in Maltese from their Proto-Arabic origins, continuing the work begun in Lucas, Spagnol & Brown (2025) on a comprehensive database of the Form I verbs in use in contemporary standard Maltese. We consider hollow, geminate, final-weak, initial-weak and irregular verbs, focusing on the evolution of the stem vowels of both the Perfect and the Imperfect, and showing how they can be accounted for on the basis of exceptionless sound laws, together with a small number of well-motivated analogical changes.
Dan l-artiklu jsegwi l-iżvilupp tal-verbi dgħajfin u torox fil-Malti min-nisel Proto-Għarbi tagħhom, u b’hekk jibni fuq ix-xogħol mibdi minn Lucas, Spagnol u Brown (2025) dwar ġabra sħiħa ta’ verbi tal-ewwel forma użati fil-Malti standard kontemporanju. Nittrattaw il-verbi moħfijin, torrox, neqsin, xebbihin u irregolari, u niffukaw fuq l-evoluzzjoni tal-vokali fiz-zokk tal-Perfett u l-Imperfett, u nuru kif jistgħu jiġu spjegati skont regoli fonetiċi bla eċċezzjonijiet, flimkien ma’ għadd żgħir ta’ bidliet analoġiċi b’motivazzjoni ċara.

10.5281/zenodo.16933070

1 Introduction

In an article currently in press (Lucas, Spagnol & Brown 2025), we traced the evolution of Maltese¹ sound Form I verbs from their Proto-Arabic ancestor, focusing on regular and analogical developments in the short vowels of the verb stem. The present article continues this work, considering weak, geminate, and irregular Form I verbs. That is, all non-augmented verbs whose roots do not consist of three distinct full consonants (e.g. kien, jkun ‘to be’, ħabb, iħobb ‘to love’).²

Our methodology is as in the previous article. The data collection process began with the extraction of all Form I verbs listed in Aquilina’s (1987; 1990) two-volume dictionary of Maltese. The resulting list was then pruned of all obsolete and hypothetical verbs, leaving only those that are actually in use in contemporary literary or spoken standard Maltese, as attested by occurrence in the MLRS Korpus Malti, version 4.2.³ In general, this means that they are in use in both the Perfect and Imperfect tenses, but we include a few items which today occur only in the Imperfect. Where Aquilina lists a now-obsolete Perfect for such verbs, we include it in parentheses in the tables below, as in (ħaf,) iħuf ‘to prowl around’. We also consider here only verbs that are demonstrably derived from Arabic, not Romance-origin items that have been assimilated into Maltese as Form I weak verbs, such as fada, jafda ‘to trust’ (< Sicilian fidari and/or Italian fidare), or Maltese-internal denominal coinages, such as dar, idur ‘to reside’ (< dar ‘house’).

For each verb in the resulting list, we list cognates in Tunisian and Egyptian Arabic, and supply reconstructions in both the immediate common ancestor shared by Maltese, Tunisian, Egyptian and Urban Levantine Arabic—which we label Early Urban Arabic—and also in Proto-Arabic (see Lucas, Spagnol & Brown 2025 for further details on this methodology and sources for the cognates), showing how each class of weak verb has evolved from Proto-Arabic, via Early Urban Arabic, to its present-day form in Maltese.

The article is structured as follows. In Section 2 we provide the historical phonological background required for an understanding of the analyses presented in the following sections. We then deal with the various types of weak verbs in turn: hollow verbs (Section 3), geminate verbs (Section 4), final-weak verbs (Section 5), initial-weak verbs (Section 6), and finally in Section 7 we consider several highly irregular verbs. Section 8 concludes.

2 Historical phonological background

Lucas, Spagnol & Brown (2025) built on van Putten’s (2020) important work establishing the sound laws linking the three short vowels of Proto-Arabic to the five of Maltese. As van Putten points out, this task is complicated by a considerable amount of subsequent analogical change, which can, however, largely be circumvented by examining only so-called primary nouns in the first instance. These are nouns which are not part of a morphologically derived paradigm. Because of this, they are much less subject to analogical influence, and consequently are a surer guide to the purely phonological changes undergone by the segments they contain.

The relevant changes, established by van Putten (2020) on the basis of primary nouns, with some minor additions provided by Lucas, Spagnol & Brown (2025), are briefly restated below. Crucial to the statement of these changes are the “guttural” and “emphatic” consonants of Arabic and earlier Maltese. The guttural consonants are defined, for the purposes of the developments under discussion, as *ʕ (Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) <ع>, Maltese <għ>), *ɣ (MSA <غ>, Maltese <għ>), *ḥ (MSA <ح>, Maltese <ħ>), *ḫ (MSA <خ>, Maltese <ħ>), and *q (MSA <ق>, Maltese <q>). The emphatic consonants are those with a secondary back articulation (dorsal or pharyngeal), namely: *ṭ (MSA <ط>, Maltese <t>), *ṣ (MSA <ص>, Maltese <s>), and *ð̣ (MSA <ض ,ظ>, Maltese <d>). In addition, *r (MSA <ر>, Maltese <r>) is emphatic in some but not all cases. In general, it acts as emphatic as long as it is not syllable-initial and does not follow a high front vowel. But also, all the sedentary North African varieties of Arabic to which Maltese is most closely related exhibit a phonemic split between emphatic /ṛ/ and non-emphatic /r/, such that *r in certain roots, such as √RʔS ‘head’, is emphatic no matter the phonological context.

In the past few centuries, Maltese has lost the distinction between emphatic and non-emphatic consonants, and merged or lost several of the guttural consonants. Emphatic and guttural contexts are therefore historical—not synchronic—conditioning environments, but the synchronic distribution of the various reflexes of the vowels of Proto-Arabic can only be understood with reference to these historical environments. This distribution is as follows.

In all contexts relevant to the stem vowels of Form I verbs, Proto-Arabic *u becomes Maltese /o/ (IPA /ɔ/). In general, *i remains /i/ (IPA /ɪ/), including in emphatic environments. Adjacent to a guttural consonant or *h (MSA <ه>, Maltese <h>), *i becomes /e/ (IPA /ɛ/). Additionally, *i becomes /e/ in a post-stress closed syllable, unless that syllable contains an emphatic or the final consonant is guttural, in which case it becomes /ɑ/ (IPA /ɐ/). Proto-Arabic *a becomes Maltese /e/, except in the environment of a guttural or emphatic consonant, where it remains /ɑ/.

Van Putten (2020) mentions the long vowels in passing. Since they are of particular relevance for the weak verbs, we need to address them in detail here. Two of the three Proto-Arabic long vowels are straightforward: as Cohen (1966: 19; cited by van Putten 2020: 64) notes, *ū and *ī are reflected as Maltese /ū/ (IPA /uː/) and /ī/ (IPA /iː/) respectively. The outcome of Proto-Arabic *ā is more complex, as it splits into two distinct Maltese phonemes: /ɑ̄/ (IPA /ɐː/) and /ie/ (IPA /ɪː/). Many Arabic varieties have a raised and fronted allophone of *ā, appearing in complementary distribution with a low allophone. The latter is restricted to “back” consonantal environments (the precise definition of which varies from dialect to dialect), while the former appears elsewhere. This raising phenomenon is known in the Arabic grammatical tradition as imāla. In the case of the Maltese imāla, we are dealing with a phonemic split, as the aforementioned losses and mergers of back consonants mean that the environments in which the two reflexes of Proto-Arabic *ā appear are now overlapping rather than complementary.

As we will see, the distribution of these two reflexes of *ā in Maltese has been significantly impacted by analogical changes in the Perfect tense of hollow verbs (as well as in a number of other morphologically derived forms, such as active participles, which are not our focus here). In order to understand these analogical changes, it is necessary to first establish the precise environment in which imāla was blocked in earlier Maltese, prior to the consonantal changes which disrupted that environment.

Borg (1976) discusses the issue of imāla in Maltese and Arabic varieties in some detail. His point of departure is the observation that one can capture a good part of the data with a rule stating that the low reflex of *ā “is maintained [in Maltese] in the neighbourhood of a segment that is historically ‘plus back’” (1976: 203). He then goes on to point out numerous exceptions to this rule, including several alternate forms in the Form I hollow verbs (such as diem~dam ‘to linger’ and sieb~sab ‘to find’), which we will consider in Section 3. His suggestion for how to explain these exceptions is that at “some later stage in its history, Maltese… came under the influence of an imaala-less dialect” (Borg 1976: 220). But before we resort to such speculations, we should first make sure that our initial statement of the blocking environment for imāla is correct. Borg (1976: 191) explains that his “plus back” encompasses all of the emphatic and guttural consonants listed above. But we should not expect a priori that imāla will be sensitive to the presence of guttural consonants. Borg (1976: 206) himself points out that there are some Arabic varieties in which gutturals only block imāla when they precede *ā, and others in which a guttural environment does not block imāla at all.

In order to discover where Maltese fits into this typology, we need to follow van Putten’s (2020) lead and examine primary nouns. Several examples of these show that imāla is blocked in what was historically an emphatic environment, such as ras ‘head’ (< *ṛās) and dar ‘house’ (< *dāṛ). The only putative counterexample is tieqa ‘window’, which appears to derive from *ṭāqa. However, in the North African dialects of Arabic to which Maltese is most closely related, this word is typically realized with a non-emphatic initial consonant,⁴ this being an instance of a more general rule in these dialects of root consonants losing emphasis before a following uvular (cf. Souag 2013: 37). The source of Maltese tieqa is therefore *tāqa, and tieqa is thus not a counterexample to the rule that imāla is blocked in an emphatic environment. Instead, what this item shows is that imāla is not blocked when a guttural follows. Further examples of this are sieq ‘leg’ (< *sāq) and siegħa ‘hour’ (< *sāʕa). Van Putten (2020: 64) suggests that imāla is blocked when a guttural precedes, but fails to give a primary-noun example, giving only the verb qal ‘to say’ (< *qāl). Primary nouns in which a guttural precedes *ā without a following emphatic are very scarce, but there is one clear example: qiegħ ‘bottom’ (< *qāʕ).

The data therefore indicates that imāla was blocked in Maltese simply in the environment of emphatic consonants, before these were lost, and not in the environment of gutturals. In the following section, we will see this manifested in the hollow verbs, where exceptions are shown to result from a relatively simple operation of analogy.

3 Hollow verbs

The hollow verbs in Maltese and Arabic varieties are those which derive from Proto-Arabic roots in which the medial radical (R2) is a glide: w or y. It seems that in Proto-Arabic roots with glides in medial and final position behaved regularly, at least in the Perfect of Form I verbs (van Putten 2017). Thus, just as ordinary Perfects were of three kinds, depending on the vowel after the second radical (*CɑCɑC, *CɑCiC and *CɑCuC), verbs with a medial glide also exhibited the same three classes: *CɑWɑC, *CɑWiC and *CɑWuC (where W stands for w or y). In Early Urban Arabic, however, as well as in the variety of Classical Arabic which became MSA, these medial triphthongs were all monophthongized as ā, giving us the characteristic Perfect hollow verb pattern: *Cɑ̄C.

Form I verbs in Proto-Arabic also vary with respect to the vowel after the second radical and the vowel on the prefix in the Imperfect. The basic pattern here is *yVCCVC and there are three specific arrangements of vowels that occur: *yiCCɑC, *yɑCCiC and *yɑCCuC.⁵ In the hollow verbs, these Imperfect patterns collapse to *yiCɑ̄C, *yɑCīC and *yɑCūC already in Proto-Arabic (cf. Schuchardt 2016). These are then carried into Early Urban Arabic as *yiCɑ̄C, *yɑCīC and *yiCūC (the latter with optional vowel harmony, giving *yuCūC). Of these three, *yiCɑ̄C is the least common. The vast majority of hollow verbs have either *ī or *ū in the Imperfect, and in all of these, *y as R2 is associated with *ī in the Imperfect and *w as R2 is associated with *ū (e.g. √KWN: *kān, y(i/u)kūn ‘to be’, √ZYD: *zād, yazīd ‘to increase’). In contemporary Arabic dialects, the yiCɑ̄C Imperfect pattern is generally restricted to three verbs: ḫāf, yiḫāf ‘to fear’, bāt, yibāt ‘to spend the night’, and nām, yinām ‘to sleep’. Maltese has lost all of these (ħaf, iħuf ‘to prowl around’ derives from Proto-Arabic *ḥāf, yaḥūf ‘to be next to’). All Maltese hollow verbs therefore have either /ū/ or /ī/ in the Imperfect, having retained the original medial vowel of the Imperfect in every case.

The medial vowel in the Perfect of Maltese hollow verbs is always a reflex of *ā. In most cases it is the expected reflex: /ɑ̄/ when R1 or R3 was originally emphatic (as in Table 1) and /ie/ when neither are emphatic (as in Table 2).

However, there are several cases where we do not get the expected reflex. That is, in these cases we have, at least optionally, /ie/ where /ɑ̄/ would be expected, and vice versa. These are presented in Table 3 and Table 4 respectively.

To explain these anomalies, it is not necessary to invoke contact with an imāla-less dialect. Instead, we can explain them in terms of an analogical change of a kind already well-established in Arabic varieties. As we pointed out in Lucas, Spagnol & Brown (2025) regarding Imperfect strong verbs, in the transition from Proto-Arabic to Early Urban Arabic, there came to be a strong (but not exceptionless) association between an emphatic R2 or R3 and a /u/ as the stem vowel (e.g. *yafṭim > *y(i/u)fṭum ‘to wean’), and a non-emphatic R2 or R3 and /i/ as the stem vowel (e.g. *yaktub > *yaktib ‘to write’). Maltese inherited a similar, though weaker, association in hollow verbs between emphatic radicals and a /ū/ stem vowel in the Imperfect. This can be seen in Table 1, where five of the seven hollow verbs with an emphatic R1 or R3 have /ū/ as the stem vowel in the Imperfect.

Now consider again the three verbs in Table 3. These are verbs that at least optionally have /ie/ in the Perfect, when we would expect /ɑ̄/, given the emphatic radicals. Note that all of these verbs have /ī/ as the stem vowel in the Imperfect. Conversely, regarding the verbs in Table 4, which anomalously have /ɑ̄/ in the Imperfect when we would expect /ie/, eight out of nine have /ū/ as the stem vowel in the Imperfect. The obvious conclusion is that there has been an analogical extension, within the history of Maltese proper, of the already existing association between /ū/ in the Imperfect and /ɑ̄/ in the Perfect, and therefore also between /ī/ in the Imperfect and /ie/ in the Perfect.

Note that analogical change, by its nature, works via tendencies, optionality, and semi-regularity. Thus we have several verbs that have resisted the pressure of analogy, such as sar, isir ‘to become’ (< *ṣār, yaṣīr), which has not developed a Perfect with /ie/, or kien, ikun ‘to be’, which has not developed a Perfect with /ɑ̄/. There is also the isolated case of ġieb, iġib ‘to bring’, which has developed the alternative Perfect form ġab in the absence of a clear analogical model for doing so.

Exceptions of this kind are not unexpected and do not undermine the basic conclusion: the phonology of a complex system, such as hollow verbs, does not evolve at random, but rather through the interaction of regular sound change and semi-regular analogy, both of which can be straightforwardly reconstructed. In Section 4 we apply the same approach to geminate verbs.

Before that, there is one more small class of hollow verbs to consider. These are the four verbs shown in Table 5, which begin with <għ> (< *ʕ < [*ʕ,*ɣ]) and have /ē/ as the stem vowel in the Perfect.

Three of these verbs contain no emphatic consonant, so imāla is expected. In għer (< *ɣār) the final /r/ should block imāla. The fact that we have it is to be explained, as with the verbs in Table 3, as an extension of the association between /ī/ in the Imperfect and imāla in the Perfect. The fact that, in the case of the verbs in Table 3, imāla has resulted in /e/ rather than /ie/ is evidently conditioned by the initial pharyngeal. This is not unexpected. Cairene Arabic is an example of a related Arabic variety in which only emphatics block imāla,⁹ but where, in the environment of a pharyngeal, /ā/ can optionally be realized with a different allophone ([aː]) to the one found in other imāla environments ([ɛ̈ː]) (Woidich 2006: 9). Maltese must have inherited a similar system of allophony, which later led to a phonemic split between /ē/ and /ie/, alongside the split between /ā/ and /ie/.

4 Geminate verbs

Geminate verbs are those in which R2 and R3 are identical. As Huehnergard (2005: 171–6) shows, in Proto-Semitic (as reflected in Akkadian and Ge’ez), these verbs behaved just like ordinary strong verbs. But in Proto-Central-Semitic, and therefore Proto-Arabic, there is a sound change such that a short vowel between R2 and R3 is deleted whenever a vowel (which could be any inflectional suffix) follows R3. Thus we have, for example, Proto-Arabic *ɮ^ʕaraba, yaɮ^ʕribu ‘to hit’, but *dalla, yadullu ‘to indicate’, rather than **dalala, yadlulu.¹⁰

As noted in Section 3, there are three patterns in the Perfect of Proto-Arabic sound verbs: *CɑCɑC, *CɑCiC and *CɑCuC. In the Proto-Arabic geminate verbs the second vowel is simply deleted in the third person, and we have a single pattern *CɑCC, with /ɑ/. As explained in Section 2, short *a becomes /e/ (IPA /ɛ/) in Maltese, except in the environment of an emphatic or guttural consonant, where it remains /ɑ/ (IPA /ɐ/). It is therefore as expected that we find two patterns in the Perfect of Maltese geminate verbs: CɑCC and CeCC, with CɑCC occurring mostly when R1 or R2/3 is guttural or emphatic, and CeCC mostly otherwise. Table 6 shows all instances of CɑCC verbs in Maltese where the /ɑ/ is the regular outcome of *a adjacent to a guttural or emphatic, while Tables 7 and 8 show all instances of CeCC verbs where the /e/ in the Perfect is the regular outcome of *a in the absence of a guttural or emphatic.

Corresponding to the Imperfect patterns of Proto-Arabic sound verbs (*yɑCCiC, *yɑCCuC and *yiCCɑC), there are three patterns for the Imperfect of geminate verbs: *yɑCiCC, *yɑCuCC and *yiCɑCC. Just as *yiCɑ̄C is the least common Imperfect pattern in hollow verbs, *yiCɑCC is the least common geminate pattern. No verbs with this pattern survive as such into contemporary standard Maltese (but note *ḥabb ‘to love’ in Table 7 and *saff ‘to suck’ in Table 10). The most frequent Imperfect pattern in Maltese geminate verbs is iCCoC. This is the regularly expected reflex of *yɑCCuC. Note in particular that every verb in Table 6 has a regularly inherited Imperfect of this pattern, while all the regularly developed verbs in Table 7 have iCCiC Imperfects, the regular reflex of *yɑCCiC in the absence of a guttural or emphatic consonant.

Table 8 shows verbs which have /e/ as the regularly expected reflex of *a in the Perfect (due to the lack of gutturals or emphatics), but which also have /e/ in the Imperfect, where the regularly expected reflex of *i here is /i/, as in Table 7. This irregular /e/ in the Imperfect is best understood as levelling or harmonization of the stem vowels within individual verb paradigms. Consider xedd ‘to put on (clothes)’. This has two variant Imperfect forms: the regularly expected ixidd, and an innovative form ixedd. Presumably there used to be similar variation in the Imperfects of the other verbs in Table 8 before the original forms with /i/ were lost.

We also see this tendency towards harmonization between Perfect and Imperfect in the verbs in Table 9, except here the /e/ is the regular outcome of *i adjacent to a guttural in the Imperfect, but irregular in the Perfect, since the presence of gutturals would normally cause *a to be reflected as /ɑ/, as in Table 6. Consider in Table 9 the doublets qarr/qerr, iqerr ‘to confess’ and raqq/reqq, ireqq ‘to get thin’. Here we have the regularly inherited forms with /ɑ/ preserved alongside the innovative forms with /e/, harmonizing with the regularly inherited /e/ in the Imperfects. As before, we can assume that similar doublets existed for the other verbs in this table, before the original forms were lost.

Finally, we have the verbs in Table 10, which have /ɑ/ in the Perfect where /e/ is expected, since there are no gutturals or emphatics. A particularly instructive verb here is ‘to whet’. This is *sann in Early Urban Arabic, with two possible Imperfects: *y(i/u)sunn with stem vowel /u/, continuing Proto-Arabic *yasunn, and also innovative *yasinn, exhibiting the tendency, described in Section 3, to replace an original stem vowel /u/ with /i/ in non-emphatic roots, as in *yaktub > *yaktib (and as also evident with the verbs in Table 7). Maltese has inherited both of these Imperfects as isonn and isinn respectively. Thus, one regularly expected paradigm for this verb, given the lack of emphatics or gutturals, would be senn, isinn. This is indeed attested, and we have therefore listed it among the regular verbs in Table 7. The form isonn is also regularly expected, but the alternative attested Perfect form sann, listed in Table 10, is not. This form with /ɑ/, along with all the other irregular /ɑ/ Perfects in Table 10, is best explained in directly parallel fashion to the process we saw in Section 3 regarding hollow verbs. There we saw an analogical extension of the association between /ū/ in the Imperfect and /ɑ̄/ in the Perfect to verbs in which the regularly expected reflex of *ā is /ie/, given the lack of emphatic R1 or R3. With the geminate verbs, we have an even stronger inherited association between /o/ in the Imperfect and /ɑ/ in the Perfect: note that every verb in Table 6 has a regularly inherited /o/ in the Imperfect. In Table 10, where all the Maltese verbs have regularly inherited /o/ stem vowels in the Imperfect, we see the extension of this /o/–/ɑ/ association to verbs which originally must have had /e/ as their stem vowel in the Perfect.

Thus we see here, as with the hollow verbs discussed in Section 3, that an apparently complex dataset can be accounted for by means of regular sound laws and the operation of a limited number of straightforward analogical tendencies. In the next section we consider the final-weak verbs, where we once again observe similar processes at work.

5 Final-weak verbs

Final-weak verbs are those in which R3 is *w or *y. The evidence of Safaitic inscriptions and the Quranic consonantal text suggests that such roots behaved regularly in Proto-Arabic (van Putten 2017; 2020: 26–29), except that /iw/ and /uy/ sequences were likely realized as *ī (or *iy) and *ū (or *uw), respectively, already in Proto-Semitic (Huehnergard 2019: 52). However, in all Arabic dialects and in the variety of Classical Arabic that becomes MSA, the inherited final triphthong *VWV becomes a monophthong (long in MSA, generally short in the dialects, where vowel length is not distinctive in unstressed word-final open syllables). Thus for Proto-Arabic we can reconstruct the following Perfect patterns: *CɑCɑW(ɑ), *CɑCuW(ɑ), *CɑCiW(ɑ). In MSA, these are reflected as CɑCɑ̄, CɑCɑ̄, and CɑCiy(ɑ), respectively, and in Early Urban Arabic they can be reconstructed as *CɑCɑ, *CɑCɑ, and *CiCi, respectively. The Proto-Arabic Imperfect patterns can be reconstructed as *yɑCCiW(V), *yɑCCuW(V), and *yiCCɑW(V). In MSA, these are reflected as yɑCCī, yɑCCū, and yɑCCɑ̄, respectively, and in Early Urban Arabic they can be reconstructed as *yaCCi, *y(i/u)CCu, and *yiCCa, respectively. In the dialects which descend from Early Urban Arabic, however, /u/-final Imperfects are rare, generally being levelled to /i/-final Imperfects (as in MSA yadʕū ‘to call’ versus Cairene yidʕi, Maltese jidgħi), occasionally also to /ɑ/-final (as in MSA yadhū ‘to afflict’ versus Cairene yidhi, Maltese jedha ‘to kill time’).¹⁴

At an early stage in the history of the Maghrebi dialect group, to which Maltese and Tunisian belong, there was considerable levelling in the Perfect of final-weak verbs, such that now all original *CiCi (< *CɑCiW) Perfects have been levelled to *CɑCɑ. These are reflected in Maltese as either CɑCɑ Perfects, all of which have the expected guttural or emphatic as R1 or R2 (see Table 11), or CeCɑ Perfects, most of which lack gutturals or emphatics (see Table 12). All CeCɑ verbs that do contain gutturals or emphatics (Table 13) are straightforwardly accounted for by means of an analogical process familiar from the preceding sections.

Unlike the hollow and geminate verbs considered in the previous sections, R1 and R2 form a consonant cluster in the Imperfect of final-weak verbs. This means that, in Maltese, prefix vowels are maintained in these verbs, as they are in sound verbs. In Lucas, Spagnol & Brown (2025), we discussed the so-called Barth-Ginsberg alternation (cf. footnote 4), which concerns these prefix vowels and their interaction with stem vowels. Specifically, in Proto-Arabic, the prefix vowel is /i/ in verbs with *CɑCiC Perfects, and otherwise the prefix vowel is /ɑ/. This alternation is maintained in Early Urban Arabic, except that when the stem vowel is /u/, the prefix vowel varies optionally between /i/ and /u/. Most Arabic dialects level the prefix vowel to /i/ (or /u/) across the board. In Maltese and Tunisian, however, *a as the inherited prefix vowel is maintained in strong verbs when R1 is guttural, and sporadically maintained when R1 is /r/, and otherwise levelled to /i/. In both Maltese and Tunisian (Singer 1984: 360) final-weak verbs, we see a similar alternation between /ɑ/ and /i/, but here there is no longer any connection with the Perfect: /ɑ/ is now the prefix vowel simply whenever R1 is guttural (and sometimes when it is /r/). Otherwise, it is /i/ (or rarely /e/ or /o/ in Maltese).

The Maltese verbs that have developed regularly according to the processes described above are presented in Tables 11 and 12.

Table 13 shows all the final-weak verbs that (at least optionally) have CeCɑ Perfects, despite having a guttural or emphatic R1 or R2. In parallel with what we have seen for the hollow and geminate verbs, in final-weak verbs we see that an association has developed between /i/ as the final vowel in the Imperfect, and CeCɑ rather than CɑCɑ as the Perfect pattern. Thus, all but one of the verbs in Table 13 have jVCCi Imperfects and have therefore extended the association between Imperfects of this type and CeCɑ (rather than CɑCɑ) Perfects. The one exception is safa/sefa, jisfa ‘to clear up (sky)’, where there is no obvious motivation for the innovation of the CeCɑ Perfect pattern, given the /ɑ/ in the Imperfect, though it is conceivable that in the past there was a jisfi variant of the Imperfect, the result of levelling of the more conservative Early Urban Arabic Imperfect pattern *y(i/u)ṣfu.

There are three further final-weak verbs with a quite different pattern. These are shown in Table 14.

Of these three, għoxa, jogħxa ‘to faint’ is the most straightforward. This is the regular reflex of a Proto-Arabic and Early Urban Arabic passive: *ɣuši, y(i/u)ɣša (< *ɣušiy, yuɣšaw). The active *ɣašiy means ‘to cover’ and the passive *ɣušiy ʕalayh means ‘to faint’ (literally ‘to be covered’). As noted in Lucas, Spagnol & Brown (2025), there are also two Maltese sound verbs which reflect original passive forms: ħoloq, joħloq, which formerly meant ‘to be born’ (Aquilina 1987) (< *ḫuluq, y(i/u)ḫluq < *ḫuliq, yuḫlaq ‘to be created’) and għolob, jogħlob ‘to become thin’ (< *ɣulub, y(i/u)ɣlub < *ɣulib, yuɣlab ‘to be defeated’).

The other two verbs in Table 14 cannot be explained in this way, but instead seem to be the result of an analogical extension to the verbs of the /o/ that is characteristic of several of the nominal and adjectival forms of these roots: għolja ‘hill’, għoli ‘high’, ogħla ‘higher, more expensive’.¹⁵

6 Initial-weak verbs

The initial-weak verbs in Maltese are those in which R1 is *w. Evidence for the reconstruction of *w-initial verbs in Proto-Arabic is somewhat scarce (see Al-Jallad 2015: 119; Huehnergard 2019: 66), but what evidence there is speaks in favour of a system similar to that found in MSA, whereby they behave regularly in the Perfect, but the initial weak radical drops in the Imperfect of many but not all verbs, as in *waṣal, yaṣil ‘to arrive’, but *wagiʕ, yīgaʕ ‘to ache’ (underlyingly *yiwgaʕ).

There does not appear to be a clear phonetic motivation for the dropping of R1 in some *w-initial verbs and its retention in others, but there is a certain amount of regularity to the distribution, which is linked to the relationship between stem vowels in the Perfect and Imperfect. In order to understand this relationship, we need to revisit the Barth-Ginsberg alternation discussed in Section 5. For Northwest Semitic languages, this alternation is typically stated in terms of a relationship between the stem vowel and the prefix vowel in the Imperfect. That is, if the stem vowel is *a, then the prefix vowel is *i, as in *yirkab ‘to ride’, otherwise the prefix vowel is *a, as in *yaktub ‘to write’ and yaʔsir ‘to take prisoner’. This statement fails to fully account for the Proto-Arabic facts, however, as here we have a large class of verbs that have a guttural consonant for R2 or R3 and, as a consequence, have *a as the stem vowel in the Imperfect in place of original *i, but also *a (not *i) as the prefix vowel, as in *baʕaθ, yabʕaθ ‘to send’.¹⁶ In view of the existence of verbs of this kind, a more accurate generalization regarding vowelling in Proto-Arabic is that the Imperfect prefix vowel is *i only with verbs that have the form *CɑCiC in the Perfect, as in *rakib, yirkab. This generalization captures the data for all Proto-Arabic strong verbs, in which an *i stem vowel in the Perfect always corresponds to an *a stem vowel in the Imperfect (*CɑCiC ↔︎ *yiCCɑC).

Returning to the *w-initial verbs, however, here we do not find the same Perfect–Imperfect correspondence. For Classical Arabic, the grammarians record a number of verbs in which R1 is dropped in the Imperfect and /i/ is the stem vowel in both the Perfect and the Imperfect (e.g. Wright 1874: 78), as in waθiq, yaθiq ‘to trust’ and wariθ, yariθ ‘to inherit’. It is not clear why these verbs defy the basic *CɑCiC ↔︎ *yiCCɑC pattern, especially since a number of other *wɑCiC verbs conform to it, as in the aforementioned *wagiʕ, yīgaʕ ‘to ache’ (underlyingly *yiwgaʕ), and also *waḥil, yīḥal ‘to become stuck’ (underlyingly *yiwḥal), both of which retain R1 in the Imperfect. In addition, there are two verbs, which in Classical Arabic have wɑCiC Perfects and the expected /ɑ/ stem vowel in the Imperfect, but which nevertheless drop R1 in the Imperfect: waṭiʔ, yaṭaʔ ‘to tread’ and wasiʕ, yasaʕ ‘to be wide’, which can presumably be reconstructed as such for Proto-Arabic. It remains to be seen whether a satisfactory account can be found for how this heterogeneous state of affairs came about. But to summarize, we can say that, except for waṭiʔ and wasiʕ, if a *w-initial verb has *i as the Perfect stem vowel and *a as the Imperfect stem vowel, then it will retain R1 in the Imperfect and have *i as the prefix vowel. Other *w-initial verbs drop R1 in the Imperfect¹⁷ and have *a as the prefix vowel, as in *waṣal, yaṣil ‘to arrive’, and *waqaʕ, yaqaʕ ‘to fall’.

A superficial look at the contemporary Arabic dialects might encourage a view that these represent a more conservative stage of *w-initial verbs than we find in Classical Arabic, namely one where R1 was retained across the board. In Cairene, for example, R1 is retained in the Imperfect of verbs that drop it in Classical Arabic, as in wiṣil, yiwṣal ‘to arrive’, and the Tunisian and Levantine Imperfects yūṣil and yūṣal look like regular developments from the Cairene pattern, with the sound change *iw > /ū/. On closer inspection, however, yū-/yiw- Imperfect prefixes with such verbs look more like an innovation. In much of the Levant, such verbs have an alternative Imperfect form with a short prefix vowel: yəṣal (Cowell 1964: 74), and the two Cairene verbs wiʔif ‘to stop’ and wiʔiʕ ‘to fall’ also have Imperfects with a short vowel: yuʔaf, yuʔaʕ (Woidich 2006: 81).

Against this background, Maltese exhibits notable conservatism among these verbs. As can be seen in Tables 15–16, with the single exception of waqaf, jieqaf ‘to stop’ (discussed below), wherever Proto-Arabic drops R1 in the Imperfect and has a short prefix vowel, this is maintained in Maltese, whereas Tunisian and Cairene have a long vowel or a diphthong in every case (at least optionally). The extension of yū-/yiw- Imperfects to all *w-initial verbs must therefore be a post-Early Urban Arabic innovation.

The Maltese initial-weak verbs that have developed regularly from Early Urban Arabic, following the sounds laws set out in Section 2 (but also with expected levelling of the *ya- prefix to *yi- before non-gutturals), are shown in Table 15.

The verbs shown in Table 16 all exhibit at least some irregularity in their historical development. The Perfects of wasal ‘to arrive’, weħel ‘to get stuck’, and waqaf ‘to stop’ are all regular. The expected Imperfect of wasal is **jisal, since there is no guttural to prevent levelling of the prefix vowel to /i/. The attested form jasal is to be explained as the result of pressure to create vowel harmony between the stem vowel and prefix vowel, as well as parallelism between the vowelling of the Perfect and Imperfect (see Lucas, Spagnol & Brown 2025 for numerous vowel-harmonic changes of this kind in the strong verbs). The same is true for jeħel. Expected here would be **jiwħel (see below for discussion of juġa’ ‘to ache’). The anomalous long vowel in jieqaf ‘to stop’ represents an innovation in the immediate common ancestor of Maltese and Tunisian (*yaqif > *yāqif). This is evidently an analogical extension of the *yākul and *yāḫuð Imperfects discussed below in Section 7. Note that Tunisian has further extended this yā- prefix to its reflex of the verb for ‘to fall’: wqaʕ, yāqaʕ. The stem vowel /ɑ/ in jieqaf is also not the regularly expected /e/ (compare Tunisian yāqif, which shares with Maltese the rule of post-stress neutralization of *a and *i). This presumably represents the outcome of pressure for matching vowels after R2 in both the Perfect and Imperfect.

The two remaining verbs in Table 16 have variant Perfect forms: weġa’/waġa’, ‘to ache’ and wesa’/wasa’ ‘to contain’. The form weġa’ is the regularly expected form of Early Urban Arabic *wagaʕ. The variant waġa’ must be the result of copying back the vowel of the second syllable to the first in order to re-establish vowel harmony. As shown by Lucas, Spagnol & Brown (2025), this a commonly observed phenomenon in sound verbs with a guttural R3 (e.g. bela’/bala’, nefaħ/nafaħ, neża’/naża’, żera’/żara’, etc.). This must also be the explanation of the variant form wasa’ from wesa’, but wesa’ itself is also not the regularly expected reflex of wisiʕ, which would be wisaʕ. However, there are no CiCɑC verbs in Maltese. This is because of a far-reaching process, detailed by Lucas, Spagnol & Brown (2025), of re-establishing vowel harmony in Perfects in the immediate common ancestor of Tunisian and Maltese, after the disruption caused by the post-stress neutralization rule. Thus we had, for example with the verb ‘to be happy’, *firiḥ > *firaḥ > *faraḥ, the regular outcome of which in Maltese is feraħ, and exactly parallel to this we have *wisiʕ > *wisaʕ > *wasaʕ > Maltese wesa’.

The two variant Imperfect forms for ‘to contain’—jesa’ and jasa’ instead of regularly expected **jisa’—are transparently the result of establishing parallelism with the respective Perfect forms wesa’ and wasa’. The form juġa’ (IPA /ˈjuːdʒɐ/) ‘to ache’ is noteworthy due to its long /ū/ in the prefix.¹⁸ This reflects the retained R1 in the reconstructed form *yiwgaʕ. Given that /iw/ is a licit (albeit rare) sequence syllable-internally in contemporary Maltese (as in the nouns of instance tiwja ‘a fold’ and xiwja ‘a roasting’), it is somewhat surprising that the same sequence is reflected as /ū/ in juġa’. But with only this single instance of an initial-weak verb with retained R1 in Maltese, and so much analogical change in this domain in other descendants of Early Urban Arabic, it does not seem possible to account for this development at present.

7 Miscellaneous irregular verbs

In this final section we consider the nine verbs in Table 17, which are both weak and irregular.

As is well known, the Maltese verb ‘to say’ is suppletive. In the Imperfect and first and second person of the Perfect, the forms go back to Proto-Arabic *ʔaʕwad, yuʕwid ‘to cause to return’, while the third-person Perfect forms go back to *qawal, yaqūl ‘to say’. The Maltese reflexes of these two hollow verbs are the regularly expected outcomes of these proto-forms.

The verb mar, imur ‘to go’ perhaps also represents a combination of two distinct Proto-Arabic verbs. The Perfect forms marret ‘she went’, marru ‘they went’, and the plural Imperfect forms such as imorru ‘they go’, clearly indicate that we are dealing with a reflex of the geminate verb *marr, yamurr ‘to pass’. The other forms, such as mar ‘he went’, mort ‘I went’ and imur ‘he goes’ look exactly like a hollow verb. Either this is a highly irregular and apparently unmotivated partial conversion of a geminate verb into a hollow verb, or, perhaps more likely (and as Aquilina 1990 suggests), these other forms reflect the Proto-Arabic verb *mawar, yamwur ‘to move to and fro’.

Regarding ‘to give’, here the Imperfect form jagħti is the regular reflex of Early Urban Arabic *yaʕṭi. In the Perfect, the expected reflex of *ʕaṭa would be **għata, but we have irregular loss of R1 (which must predate the generalized loss of *ʕ in standard Maltese), leaving only ta. We have a similar development with jaf ‘to know’, except that this lacks a Perfect form in contemporary Maltese. The regular reflex of the Early Urban Arabic form *yaʕṛif would be jagħraf. This is of course attested, but functions as a distinct verb għaraf, jagħraf ‘to recognize’. It is only in this highly reduced form, with irregular loss of both R1 and R2, that it means ‘to know’.

The remaining verbs in Table 17 are all irregular on account of being derived from Proto-Arabic weak verbs which additionally had a glottal stop for one of the radicals, the latter being lost in Early Urban Arabic, except in initial position, as in the case of the Perfect forms *ʔakal ‘to eat’ and *ʔaḫað ‘to take’. Beginning with ‘to eat’, the Maltese Imperfect form jiekol is the regular reflex of Early Urban Arabic *yākul, itself the regular reflex of Proto-Arabic yaʔkul, with loss of the glottal stop and compensatory lengthening of the prefix vowel. Some Arabic varieties, such as Levantine, maintain the initial glottal stop in the Perfect of both *ʔakal and *ʔaḫað. Others, such as Cairene, simply delete it, giving kal and ḫad. This, however, results in a verb with only two radicals, giving rise to pressure to re-establish triradicality. In the case of these two verbs, Cairene resists this pressure. In Tunisian, however, both verbs are reconfigured as final-weak: kla and ḫða. In Maltese ‘to eat’ is reconfigured in the Perfect as hollow: kiel. With ‘to take’, Maltese not only resists the pressure to re-establish triradicality, it also deletes the original R3, leaving only ħa for the third person singular masculine, though R3 is retained in all other parts of the Perfect paradigm. R3 is also deleted in the Imperfect singular, but not the plural, giving jieħu ‘he takes’ but jieħdu ‘they take’.

The verb ‘to come’ derives from Proto-Arabic *gayaʔ, yagyiʔ, a root that is both hollow and has a glottal stop for R3. This develops regularly into Early Urban Arabic *gā, yagi. The Maltese Perfect form ġie is the regular reflex of *gā. The Imperfect form jiġi (IPA /ˈjidʒɪ/) is the expected development of *yagi, with levelling of the prefix vowel to /i/. The pressure to restore triradicality is therefore resisted here (in standard Maltese at least), unlike, for example, in Cairene, where the prefix vowel is lengthened: yīgi.

Finally, ra ‘to see’ is parallel to ġie, except that here we have final-weak verb with a glottal stop as the original R2: *raʔay. The Maltese Perfect form ra is the regular reflex of Early Urban Arabic *rā. The Imperfect form jara (IPA /ˈjɐːrɐ/), however, is irregular in having a lengthened prefix vowel, presumably due both to pressure to restore triradicality, and analogy with jieħu, jiekol and jieqaf.

8 Conclusion

In this article we have shown that the considerable complexity and heterogeneity exhibited by Maltese weak verbs is not the result of random change, but can be straightforwardly accounted for on the basis of properly established exceptionless sound laws, together with the operation of simple analogical processes with generally obvious motivation. Another important point to highlight is that while we have seen numerous examples here of how Maltese has innovated, relative to the Arabic dialects, we should not overlook the fact that many areas of Maltese grammar exhibit considerable conservatism, having failed to participate in innovations that have spread through the Arabic dialects in the eight centuries since Maltese split from North African Arabic. The clearest example of this conservatism that we have seen in the present article concerns the maintenance of short vowels in the prefixes of initial-weak verbs, discussed in Section 6.

Much more work is required before we have a complete understanding of the historical development of Maltese—in all its varieties—from its Proto-Arabic origins. With the present article and Lucas, Spagnol & Brown (2025) we have dealt with the Form I verbs, but many other areas of morphophonology remain for the Maltese linguistics community to investigate, including the derived verb forms, participles, verbal nouns, adjectives, and more.

9 References

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