Maltese pseudo-verbs revisited

Slavomír Čéplö (BBAW, IOS SAV)

Abstract

This paper examines the evidence for pseudo-verbs as a distinct word class in Maltese. Analyzing morphological and syntactic properties of both established members, as well as newly identified candidates, it lays out a case for a more fine-grained classification of pseudo-verbs and provides arguments for the exclusion of some candidates.

10.5281/zenodo.16951723

1 Introduction

It is a truth generally acknowledged that in Maltese,¹ there exists a set of words to which suffixed pronouns² are attached, yet the pronouns do not fulfill any of their typical³ roles (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 132, 277): they do not mark the possessor in nouns as -i does in (1),⁴ an object - whether direct or indirect as -li does in (1) - with verbs, or the head⁵ of a preposition, as -i does in (2).

Instead, when used with these words, they create a predicate in which the suffixed pronouns mark the subject (or the S/A argument, cf. Dixon 2010b:116, Haspelmath 2011), as in (3) and (4). Note that both examples also feature the (otherwise optional) independent nominal subject.

This set of words has been referred to as pseudo-verbs at least since Schabert (1976) and categorized as a distinct word class in Peterson (2009). In this paper, I revisit this categorization, attempt to remedy its shortcomings and offer a refined analysis of pseudo-verbs in the context of word classes in Maltese.

2 Overview of previous work on pseudo-verbs

2.1 Pre-Peterson

The existence of Maltese words that take suffixed pronouns, but are not nouns, prepositions, pronouns or verbs, has been known at least since Sutcliffe (1936: 194-197). Sutcliffe refers to these words as “Adverbs with Pronominal Suffixes” and lists six: għad- described by Sutcliffe as having “various meanings” (Sutcliffe 1936: 194) including ‘not yet’ and ‘still, mnejn ’whence, from where’, qis- (which he groups with daqs) ‘as’, għodd- ‘nearly, almost’, donn- ‘apparently, seemingly, it seems’, and il- ‘ago, duration in the past’. Sutcliffe is more interested in the etymology of these lexical items than in their syntactic behavior and so is happy to file them under adverbs. Nevertheless, his observation that il- “gives a perfect sense to verbs which would otherwise be present and a pluperfect sense to verbs that would otherwise be imperfect” (Sutcliffe 1936: 197) indicates that he was aware of their participation in predication.

The first systematic treatment of pseudo-verbs under this name can be found in Schabert’s (1976) description of two Maltese varieties spoken, respectively, in San Ġiljan and Marsaxlokk. In a dedicated subsection (Schabert 1976: 133-135), Schabert discusses hemm, għand-, kell-, għad-, baqa + indirect object suffixed pronouns and jisim. Schabert describes their properties only briefly and somewhat confusingly: some of them are “copulas expressed as personal pronouns”,⁶, others are described as “prepositional expressions with verbal meaning”⁷ that can be negated and others still as originally verbal with “missing subject agreement”⁸ (Schabert 1976: 133-134).

Current state-of-the-art of research on pseudo-verbs is based on Fabri (1993). In the context of a wider analysis of agreement in Maltese, specifically in the chapter on prepositions, Fabri (1993: 198-203) describes pseudo-verbs as a “heterogenous class of somewhat strange elements”⁹ (Fabri 1993: 198). What ties them together, according to Fabri, is their common behavior with regard to agreement: like prepositions, they do not take the (verbal) subject affixes.¹⁰ Unlike prepositions (which some of them can be traced to), they obligatorily carry what Fabri refers to as an “agreement marker”¹¹ (i.e. a suffixed pronoun) even when they do not have a complement (Fabri 1993: 198). This property makes them act like verbs, which is in some cases underscored by their ability to be negated (Fabri 1993: 199). As to the place of pseudo-verbs in the grammatical system of Maltese, Fabri remarks that “it is difficult to determine which main [lexical] category these elements belong to”¹² (Fabri 1993: 199). Fabri concludes that we are witnessing the evolution of pseudo-verbs towards verbal roles, as shown by the variation in the acceptability of verbal negation with pseudo-verbs, which points to different pseudo-verbs being at different stages of said evolution (Fabri 1993: 199).

Fabri identifies 8 pseudo-verbs and notes their basic characteristics as follows:

The other work published in 1993 that analyzes pseudo-verbs in some detail is Vanhove’s comprehensive study of the the Maltese system of auxiliaries and preverbs (Vanhove 1993). Vanhove only uses the term “pseudo-verbe” with reference to għand- and its sisters (Vanhove 1993: 300-306, 409-427). Nevertheless, Vanhove also describes the syntax of other items that would wind up on Peterson’s list of pseudo-verbs, specifically għad- (Vanhove 1993: 385), fi- (Vanhove 1993: 397-397) and hemm (Vanhove 1993: 393-395).

Van der Auwera (1997) is not concerned with Maltese per se; rather, he includes għad- in his comprehensive discussion of phasal adverbials in European languages. Referring to earlier work by Sutcliffe, he joins Sutcliffe (1936) and others who describe għad- as an adverb.

Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander do not mention pseudo-verbs directly in their 1997 grammar, possibly due to its idiosyncratic format. They do, however, note the special role suffixed pronouns play when attached to għand-, describing the outcome as “probably best interpreted here as reanalysed as an irregular verb, taking for its inflection, suffixed pronouns” (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 112). The same is then said of il- (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 171) and in general of “some infrequent cases as the (subject) of an irregular verb” (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 277), referring to “modal expression għad- ‘still’ … għodd- ‘almost’, jismu ‘be named’ and some others” (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 276). They also observe that suffixed pronouns can be attached to the indefinite pronoun wieħed/waħda/uħud “one” (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 132).

And finally, Haspelmath and Caruana (2000) complicate the matters by noting that suffixed pronouns fulfill the role of subject markers not only in pseudo-verbs (which in their case means only għand- and its sisters, though they add jism- in an appendix), but also with experiential verbs. They further analyze this phenonomenon that falls under “subject diffuseness” and its variation and typology.

2.2 Peterson 2009

The first work specifically addressing the existence of pseudo-verbs as a word class of its own was published in the proceedings volume for the first conference of the Għaqda Internazzjonali tal-Lingwistika Maltija (Comrie et al. 2009) by Peterson (2009). Expanding on observations by Fabri (1993) and Borg Azzopardi-Alexander (1997), Peterson notes that while members of this class fulfill the role of verbs as (co)predicates, they are not involved in the prefixal and suffixal conjugations; rather, their subject “appears in what corresponds to the object position with verbs” (Peterson 2009: 188).

Peterson (2009: 187) adds several new items to Fabri’s list for a total of 12 (see Table 2 below). This list has become the de facto master list of pseudo-verbs and will be used - expanded as necessary - as the starting point for the analysis in this paper.

Peterson expands on Fabri’s analysis and lays out an argument for pseudo-verbs as a distinct word class in Maltese (Peterson 2009: 194). Using the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (henceforth: RRG), Peterson also analyzes the question of grammatical relations in pseudo-verbs (specifically għand- and its sisters) showing that the RRG concepts of macroroles actor and undergoer explain the goings on better than traditional notions of subject and object.

2.3 Circa and post-Peterson

Peterson’s work found almost immediate reception in the community and so the very volume in which Peterson’s paper appeared also featured a paper by the celebrant (Stolz 2009) - whom Peterson credits with identifying hemm as a pseudoverb (Peterson 2019: 186) - in which he discusses the participation of pseudo-verbs in verbal chains. The same year, a paper appeared by Michael Spagnol - whom Peterson credits with identifying beħsieb- as a pseudo-verb (Peterson 2019: 186) - which adds several items to Peterson’s list (bi-, ħaqq-, ħsieb- and moħħ-) and discusses their semantic and syntactic behavior as statives (Spagnol 2009).

2.4 Camilleri 2016

The most important revision of Peterson’s work to date is Maris Camilleri’s PhD thesis submitted at the University of Essex in 2016. In her comprehensive analysis of temporal and aspectual auxiliaries in Maltese, Camilleri devotes an entire chapter (Camilleri 2016: 115-216) to pseudo-verbs and their role as auxiliaries. The bulk of the chapter (Camilleri 2016: 154-216) is devoted to the detailed analysis of three pseudo-verbs, għodd-, il- and għad-, but the previous 39 pages contain an overview of the morphological, syntactic and semantic properties of pseudo-verbs. In this overview, Camilleri agrees with previous definitions of pseudo-verbs as “predicates [that] are not conjugated with the usual nom (unmarked) set of inflectional affixes, but take obligatory attached acc/gen pronominal form” (Camilleri 2019: 119). She expands this definition by describing pseudo-verbs as “predicates that function like verbs but are derived from nominal stems …; prepositional stems …; fused prepositional and nominal stems …; numeral stems …; quantifiers …; imperatives, and demonstrative locatives” (Camilleri 2016: 116).

Camilleri expands Peterson’s list by seven additional items (Camilleri 2016: 118), four of them taken from Spagnol (2009): bi- ‘in’, fiħsieb- ‘intend’, ma f’għajn-GEN-x ‘I don’t care’, moħħ- ‘be attentive to’, ħsieb- ‘be attentive to’, ħaqq- ‘to deserve; what if (modal)’ and nofs- ‘half’.

Camilleri’s general analysis discusses pseudo-verbs in much the same way Fabri (1993) and Peterson (2009) do, considering the role of suffixed pronouns with regard to the encoding of the subject, negation and agreement. The bulk of her analysis is devoted to the syntactic and semantic properties of għodd-, il- and għad- within the confines of the Lexical-Functional Grammar (henceforth: LFG).

2.5 Recent work

While Spagnol’s and Camilleri’s work have not - to the detriment of the field - found much reception in the literature, Peterson’s description of pseudo-verbs and their properties is still cited as the basic work on pseudo-verbs and as such, was expanded by a number of works. Azzopardi’s 2019 MA thesis further elaborates on this aspect of the syntax of pseudo-verbs. Lucas and Čéplö (2020: 282-283) discuss the secondary function of għand- as a modal as one of the grammatical calques from Sicilian.

Most recently, Lucas (2023) revisited the topic of negation in pseudo-verbs, Vanhove (2025a) described the syntax of the pseudo-verbs fi-, hemm and għand- and its sisters in the context of non-verbal predication in Maltese and Amaira (2025) analyzed the suspension of agreement in verbal chains containing pseudo-verbs. In this volume, Vanhove (2025b) revisits għand- and its sisters and their status as auxiliaries, pointing to certain special syntactic properties they exhibit.

And finally, I discussed pseudo-verbs extensively within a larger analysis of non-canonical subject marking in Maltese (Čéplö 2024). The present paper is an extension and refinement of that discussion.

2.6 Motivation for this paper

While much work has been done on both the general and the specific properties of pseudo-verbs, there still remain significant gaps in their description, especially when it comes to individual members of this set. As an observant reader may have noticed, the majority of the attention has focused on għand- and its sisters, and with good reason, considering their semantic and syntactic properties. This, however, leaves most of the others - especially those whose syntactic behavior displays some interesting properties - by the wayside. That is doubly true of the function of some of the pseudo-verbs similar to that of coverbs, identified and named by Peterson (2009: 184), but never fully elaborated upon. Additionally, previous studies have often been conducted in specific frameworks - Principles and Parameters (henceforth: PP) for Fabri (1993), RRG for Peterson (2009), LFG for Camilleri (2016) - leading to incompatible analyses and lack of consideration for the wider context of Maltese grammar.¹⁶ And finally, Fabri’s description of pseudo-verbs as a “heterogenous class” is still as accurate as it was when it was first put to page and Peterson’s and Camilleri’s analyses made that even more true. In short, the definitive account of Maltese pseudo-verbs is yet to be written.

This paper is not it. Rather, it is a precursor to such an account, focusing on the heterogeneity and the strangeness of the members of this set and the status of this set as a word class in Maltese. In what follows, I will take both a birds-eye view of pseudo-verbs in the context of Maltese (morpho)syntax, as well as zoom in on specific properties of the strangest ones.

3 Terminology and methodology

3.1 Methodology

First, a word on methodology. If the term were not laden with baggage, I would describe my approach as empirical: I collect data (in this case, corpora), analyze it and draw generalizations from it. In essence, I subscribe to linguistic nominalism: there is no such thing as Language, langue or “deep structure”, they are - at best - abstract labels. The only thing that exists is language as it is used, i.e. utterances/sentences collected in texts. These utterances consist of individual units to which I will, for expediency’s sake, refer as “words”. “Syntax” is then not a faculty to be found in the human brain, but simply a set of observations on how words combine into utterances. The study of syntax therefore starts with the study of words and their behavior in utterances and this is what you will find in what follows.

In this context, I will differentiate between two levels of analysis: first-level consists of what can be discerned immediately when looking at utterances. Word classes, valency frames, even predicate types writ large fall into this category. Second-level analysis goes beyond that and requires further conceptual apparatus; categories like auxiliaries, complement clauses and word order variation belong here. To say that a particular verb takes another verb as a dependent is first-level analysis; to describe that dependent as a complement clause is second-level analysis. To engage in second-level analysis without conducting first-level analysis is aprioristic and hardly good science. It might be possible for some to do both first-level and second-level analysis. I am not one of those superhumans and so what you will find here is first-level analysis only. The terminology I use will correspond to this goal. This is not to say that I shun second-level analysis altogether; rather, I will only use it (typically with reference to established works such as Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997) when it is not directly relevant for the purposes of this paper.

3.2 Data

In my analysis, I will rely on corpus data from the two major corpora of Maltese: Korpus Malti v4.2 (henceforth: MLRSv4.2, see Micallef et al. 2022 for details on its composition) and my bulbulistan corpus v3 (henceforth: BCv3, see Čéplö 2018: 57-81 for details on its composition). This is not to say that this is the only way to do linguistics, far from it. There are many problems with relying on corpora, especially the kind of opportunistic written corpora MLRSv4.2 and BCv3 are. Nevertheless, using corpora is a good start, doubly so in comparison to some previous studies, and certainly so if one does not claim one’s corpus-based work is the final answer to the questions examined in said work. I certainly do not.

3.3 Word classes

Peterson argues that pseudo-verb “form a separate part-of-speech class in Maltese” (Peterson 2009: 181). “Parts of speech” - or, more appriopriately, word classes - are categories of “lexical items of that language with respect to a number of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties” (Anward 2001, see also Bisang 2011). The identification of word classes in a language is one of the major tasks of linguistic description and a necessary condition for even the most cursory analysis of its syntax (Bisang 2008: 568, Dixon 2010a: 25-27, 61). To say that something belongs to a particular word class in a particular language, as Peterson does for Maltese, implies that there already exits a thorough and systematic treatment of word classes for that language.

This, however is not the case for Maltese; in fact, such a thorough and systematic treatment of word classes in Maltese using clear and consistent criteria is still a major desideratum. Why that is, is a fascinating question for the sociology of the field. Were one to embark on such an endeavor by consulting existing descriptions of Maltese, one would find that authors of such works broadly take one of two paths: one path - the imitative approach - involves simply adopting the system of the author’s native (or working) language to Maltese. The earliest such example is De Soldanis who, “following the Italian [elements of speech]”¹⁷ (De Soldanis 1750: 78), lists “noun, pronoun, verb, participle, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection”¹⁸ (De Soldanis 1750: 78). Almost a century later, Vella - writing in English - confidently asserts that “The maltese [sic] tongue, as well as the english [sic], has nine parts of speech” (Vella 1831: 19). These are essentially the same list as De Soldanis’s, except Vella adds the article and swaps participle for adjective. Panzavecchia’s list of “Parti dell Discorso” written in Italian (identical to Vella’s, except replacing adjective with participle) is introduced by a similar sentiment noting that “these nine are then the parts of speech or word types in the Maltese language, as well as in Italian and in the majority of European languages” (Panzavecchia 1845: 7).¹⁹

Panzavecchia’s reference to the European linguistic landscape foreshadows the other path grammatical descriptions of Maltese take with regard to word classes. Best described as typological, this approach is based on the tacit assumption that every linguist knows what a noun, verb, adjective etc. is. This is the case for - just to name the major works on Maltese grammar - Sutcliffe 1937, Aquilina 1959,²⁰ Fabri 1993.

There are several notable exceptions to the preceding where the authors do provide justification for assigning Maltese words to word classes. The first of them is Schabert (1976). Referring to fundamental units of the lexicon as “inflection bases”,²¹ Schabert categorizes these fundamental units “according to their morphological properties, e.g. their ability to take on different inflected forms, and according to their syntactic function”²² (Schabert 1976: 58). The full list of Maltese word classes in Schabert’s analysis comprises pronouns, verbs, nomina²³ (which are further subdivided into nouns,²⁴ adjectives and numerals), prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs (Schabert 1976: 58).

The second such exception is a paper by Fabri on numerals (Fabri 1991). As is the case with much of Fabri’s earlier work, his analysis is grounded in the framework of PP and its fundamental concepts of lexical categories and functional categories (Fabri 1991: 228). Fabri examines in detail the “main phonological, morphological and syntactic properties of numerals” (Fabri 1991: 229) in the context of the theory and sketches out a brief, yet detailed account of Maltese cardinal numerals, identifying two subclasses based on their syntactic and morphological properties.

The largest group of exceptions to the typological approach to word class categorization in Maltese comprises grammar references books and textbooks for the use in schools and by the general public. The best example - in terms of quality, rather than representativeness - is Scicluna et al. 2018. This comprehensive and well-structured volume does aim to provide a straightforward definition of each word class, even if a full list of word classes is nowhere to be found. The definitions, however, are very traditional, based solely on traditional semantic prototypes (cf. Bisang 2008: 69). And so for example, the chapter on nouns opens with the question “What is a noun?”²⁵ (Scicluna et al. 2018: 176) and answers it with “it is the part of speech that identifies a person, animal, place, object or concept” (Scicluna et al. 2018: 176).²⁶ Verbs are defined as “that part of speech which expresses action or change of state” (Scicluna et al. 2018: 80)²⁷, adverbs are “words that qualify the meaning of verbs, adjectives, an entire sentence or even other adverbs” (Scicluna et al. 2018: 62)²⁸ and adjectives do not only “describe nouns”, but also “give life to speech and writing” (Scicluna et al. 2018: 264).²⁹

Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander (1997) is the first step in the direction of comprehensive classification of Maltese lexicon. It is somewhat marred by the format of the grammar, but this time, there are actually several sections dedicated to what the template refers to as “operational definitions” of word classes. And so there is a section (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 131-135) which contains such definitions of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions and numerals/quantifiers. Another section (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 59-60) further discusses the distinction between nouns and adjectives and the composition of the “adjectival phrase” and one more (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 65) addresses adverbs and “adverbial phrase.” The definitions, however, lack a consistent principle behind them. Sometimes a syntactic criterion is evoked, such as with adverbs, which are first listed and then described as “[modifying] verbs or adjectives”. Other times the categorization is morphological, as with adjectives (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 132).

The final item on the list of exceptions to both the imitative and the typological approach - and the only attempt so far to categorize Maltese lexicon using clear and consistent criteria - can be found in my dissertation (Čéplö 2018: 66-79). This section of the chapter on the process of building a corpus of Maltese describes the tagging of the data for part of speech (PoS), both generally, as well as in detail. For the former, I describe the process of assigning PoS tags as “largely informed by Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997 and Aquilina 2007” (Čéplö 2018: 66), but with modifications to “make the tagger’s … job easier with consistency as the primary aim” (Čéplö 2018: 66). This process is based on the following diagnostic hierarchy: I. Semantics → II. Morphology → III. Syntax (Čéplö 2018: 66).

I then go on to describe the application of said hierarchy for each of the 49 tags, of which 42 are actual word classes in lingustic sense. And so, for example, NOUN (Čéplö 2018: 74) is defined as consisting of:

Words which: I. Denote beings, objects and concepts; II. can form plurals in -i, -at, -iet, -ijiet and -in or broken plurals; III. and can be modified by the definite article or an adjective

VERB (Čéplö 2018: 78) then encompasses words

… which exhibit full forms in both the prefixal conjugation (i.e. the Semitic imperfect) and the suffixal conjugation (the Semitic perfect) …

The section on pseudo-verbs (VERB_PSEU, Čéplö 2018: 78) explicitly refers to Peterson (2009), but with some deviations from it. Most notably, I divide pseudo-verbs into two types based on their morphological behavior, i.e. whether they actually take suffixed pronouns. I also single out waħd- and hemm and assign them a different tag (ADV and HEMM, respectively).

There are many problems with this analysis,³⁰ starting with its purpose, which is annotating texts to be used for Natural Language Processing. And while this is a task that is in principle identical to categorizing the lexicon into word classes, there are some differences (see the remarks on tagger’s job above). Chief among them is consistency and transferrability between various tagsets; in this case, the Maltese tagset was designed to be compatible with (i.e. automatically convertible to) the universal part-of-speech tagset (UPOS, Petrov 2012).

Despite its shortcomings (which I hope to remedy in the future), I still consider the principles behind it - i.e. the diagnostic hierarchy - clear and consistent. Its product, i.e. the classification of Maltese lexicon into word classes, has turned out to be of at least some use, since it underlies the PoS annotation for Maltese corpora (Gatt and Čéplö 2013, Micallef et al. 2022) and treebanks (Zeman et al. 2025). I will therefore apply them here as well, adapted and refined as necessary.

3.4 Lexical items

Defining word classes as “lexical items of that language with respect to a number of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties” (Anward 2001) necessitates the definition of “lexical item”. This term generally refers to lexemes (Haspelmath 2024: 76). What is lexeme, however, is a complex issue (see e.g. Bonami et al. 2018). Haspelmath’s attempt at resolving the complexity and removing the inherent polysemy of this term results in the following (re)definition (Haspelmath 2024: 77):

A lexeme is the set of word-forms that contain the same noun root, verb root or adjective root and may only contain inflectional affixes in addition.

In our context, this definition is supremely unhelpful. For one, it makes the assumption that “lexemes are generally thought of as belonging to the major (or contenful) word classes noun, verb or adjective” (Haspelmath 2024: 76);³¹ adopting this definition for our purposes would - at the very least - introduce circularity: if one sets out to investigate word classes by first defining a lexeme, a definition of a lexeme that already uses word classes will not be very helpful. Secondly, Haspelmath chooses the term “root” for what is more aptly called “base”³² (see e.g. Pullum and Huddleston 2002: 14 or Schabert 1976: 58 cited above), a most unfortunate choice when dealing with Semitic languages. And finally, Haspelmath’s (re)definition does not take into account suppletion.

Since this is not the space to engage in this discussion, I will adopt the following working definitions:

1. A lexeme is a label for a set of wordforms that are derived from the same base.
2. A wordform is an orthographic word.
3. A base is a unique combination of meaning and at least one phonological/graphic sequence which is not further divisible and is stripped of any affixes that can be added to it.
4. An affix is a unique combination of meaning and at least one phonological/graphic sequence which is not further divisible and can only appear when combined with a base.

These definitions are not without their problems (particularly 2), but they are sufficient for the following discussion. And so for the purposes of my analysis, I could apply the definitions above and find that there are three different lexemes derived from the base għand:

• għand₁ meaning ‘at’
• għand₂ meaning poss
• għand₃ meaning oblig

Recalling that a lexeme is a label for a set (and thus an abstract concept), I could further add that għand₂ and għand₃ both include wordforms derived from bases ikoll and kell. The reference to “at least one phonological/graphic sequence” in definition 3 will then allow to differentiate between the lexemes wieħed₁ meaning “one” and wieħed₂ meaning “alone”, even though when combined with affixes, the phonetic/graphic representation will change, e.g. waħda for the singular feminine of wieħed₁ and weħidna for first person plural of wieħed₂.

4 Pseudo-verbs as a word class

4.1 Pseudo-verbs as lexical items

Before proceeding to apply the diagnostic hierarchy for word class categorization as described above, a bit of clean up is in order. Peterson’s master list of pseudo-verbs (Table 2 above) notes the etymology of each of the items; so does Camilleri’s (2016: 118) expansion. It will not have escaped the reader’s attention that some of the pseudo-verbs are identical in phonological/graphic form to lexemes in other word-classes (Camilleri 2016: 122-124), most notably prepositions (Fabri 1993: 198). For the purposes of categorizing Maltese lexemes into word classes, I am listing pseudo-verbs in Peterson’s master list as expanded by Camilleri (2016: 118) in Table 3 below, along with their homophonous (homographic) lexemes.

Two technical remarks should be made here. Firstly, Camilleri lists fiħsieb- as a separate entry. This is only tenable for etymological reasons and since this paper is not concerned with that aspect of pseudo-verbs, I will include fiħsieb - as well as biħsieb - under beħsieb as orthographic variants. Secondly, Camilleri includes ma f’għajn-GEN-x ‘I don’t care’ on her list. This is self-evidently not a single lexeme, but rather a syntagma consisting of at least three different lexemes. As such, I will not include it - or its semantic equivalent x’għala żobb-GEN - on the list. This is not to say that these syntagmas are not interesting, far from it. As syntagmas, however, they are out of the scope of this paper.

I am aware that this might render the analysis somewhat circular: it is only their morphological and syntactic properties - which are the subject of further analysis below - that differentiate between, say, preposition fi₁ and pseudo-verb fi₂. Since I am using this list as a starting off point to answer the question whether pseudo-verbs as a class exist and what lexemes belong there, the circularity is not a problem; or rather, it is the problem I am trying to solve.

With regard to donn, it should be noted that Aquilina (1987: 199) derives this base from the verb dann meaning ‘to suppose, to be of the opinion that’; Serracino-Inglott (1975: 15) also lists this verb with current examples of its usage. This would mean that according to the working definition of lexeme above, the lexeme should be dann. However, neither MLRSv4.2, nor BCv3 contain any examples of any form of dann. I will therefore concur with Stolz (2009: 143, footnote 15) that dann is obsolete and donn is a base of its own.

Similar consideration applies to għodd and qis: the latter is transparently derived from the verb qies meaning ‘to measure, to take into account’. So much so, in fact, that Aquilina (1987: 1154-1155) includes it under qies. għodd, however, warrants its own entry (Aquilina 1987: 1001), separate from its ultimate source (cf. Camilleri 2018) għadd meaning ‘to count; to consider’ (Aquilina 1987: 935). In both cases, recall the definition of a base as “unique combination of meaning and at least one phonological/graphic sequence”. Both għodd and qis may be diachronically derived from għadd and qies, respectively, but they do not share the meaning of their source lexemes. I will therefore consider għodd and qis to be separate bases.

What has been said about għodd and qis applies doubly to il. For one, its derivation from lil (Peterson 2009: 187, Camilleri 2016: 118) is questionable and none of those who subscribe to it provide a convincing answer as to where the initial l- went. The argum. Secondly and more importantly, even if that etymology proved to be the correct, that does not change the fact that at the very least, the meanings are so vastly different that under the definition employed here, il must be considered a lexeme of its own. And just for completeness’s sake, I add that contrary to Camilleri (2016: 162-163), the identity of one of the forms of il and the preposition ilu and their semantic relation does not imply that one is derived from the other.

In her overview of pseudo-verbs, Camilleri lists a single pseudo-verb ħaqq- (Camilleri 2016: 118). In her discussion, however, she makes it clear that there are two lexemes with the same phonetic/graphic sequence: ħaqq₂ meaning ‘what if’ and ħaqq₃ meaning ‘to deserve’ (Camilleri 2016: 196).

And finally, a word on notation. Up until - but not including - this section, I cited pseudo-verbs in the notation used by Fabri (1993) and Peterson (2009) where the lexeme ended in a hyphen,³⁵ indicating the obligatoriness of suffixed pronouns. In what follows, I will drop the hyphen and use the notation from Table 3 above.

5 Pseudo-verbs: Semantics

There is no semantic connection between the members of this class. This criterion therefore does not apply.

6 Pseudo-verbs: Morphology

6.1 Pseudo-verbs and person marking

As noted in the introduction to this paper, the fundamental characteristic of pseudo-verbs is that they take suffixed pronouns in none of their typical functions. Fabri (1993: 198) describes suffixed pronouns in these cases as obligatory and so does Peterson (2009: 186) and Camilleri (2016: 118), with one glaring exception. Consider Table 4 below which contains the Peterson/Camilleri master list of (putative) pseudo-verbs in my notation.

The one obvious stand-out is hemm₂ of which Peterson (2009: 188) notes that “it is the only pseudo-verb which has come to my attention which never marks for person/number/gender.” Peterson goes on to describe this behavior as “expected”, since “hemm as a pseudo-verb is found in existential and presentative constructions which arguably have no subject” (Peterson 2009: 189). hemm₂ - as well as its perfect mirror hawn₂³⁶ - is indeed an existential predicate, as Vanhove (2025a: 811-813) has shown. This then raises several questions. The primary question is of course that of what justifies the inclusion of hemm₂ - and hawn₂ - in the class of pseudo-verbs when they do not share the one defining feature of the class. One answer is provided by Camilleri (2016: 117) who notes that hemm₂ can take suffixed pronouns in the dialect of Għajnsielem in Gozo. This, however, will not do, since - as Camilleri herself notes - this use of suffixed pronouns in not possible elsewhere, including the variety of Maltese I study here. The actual answer then requires the evaluation of the entire evidence. The other question, much more burning with regard to the morphology of pseudo-verbs, is this: are there any more Maltese lexemes to which suffixed pronouns are attached where they do not fulfill any of their typical functions? The answer is yes. In the next section, I will take a closer look at those.

6.2 Non-typical use of suffixed pronouns

6.2.1 nifs and ruħ

The most obvious candidates for lexemes that take suffixed pronouns are various lexemes represented by the phonetic/graphic sequences nifs and ruħ, respectively (see Table 5). Just like pseudo-verbs, the lexemes marked with subscript 2, mandatorily take suffixed pronouns.

Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander (1997) describe nifs₂ as a reflexive pronoun that takes suffixed pronouns and “always follows the free pronoun” (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 203) which can modify an object pronoun (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 94, 100), an independent possessive pronoun (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 101) and a prepositional complement (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 102). They describe ruħ₂ as fulfilling the same function while also taking “the appropriate enclitic pronoun” (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 94).

There are several interesting things about these two lexemes. For example, Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander (1997: 103) note that nifs₂ is used as an emphatic pronoun, albeit “very infrequently”. Corpus data paints a different picture and so in BCv3, 39% of uses of nifs₂ with absolute frequency over 100 are instances of emphatic use. Despite some lacunae in the description of the properties of both lexemes, as evident from their description by Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander above, they are restricted to objects, possessives and prepositional complements and thus constitute a different phenomenon than subject marking in pseudo-verbs.

6.2.2 ġmiel

The behavior of the next lexeme that mandatorily takes suffixed pronouns is somewhat less straightforward. As with e.g. nifs, there are two lexemes sharing the same phonetic/graphic sequence, namely ġmiel: the first one is ġmiel₁, a noun meaning “beauty” (5). The one of interest for this analysis is ġmiel₂, a lexeme with uncertain word class classification (Aqulina 1987: 408), the meaning of which is best given as ‘of substantial size; to a substantial extent’ (6).

Aquilina (1987: 408) subdivides the entry for ĠMIEL into three subentries. The first is my ğmiel₁; the second subentry - ĠMIEL2 - gives no part of speech and defines the meaning as “marvelously well”. The third entry - ĠMIEL3 - describes the word as “following a n[oun]” and its sense as “of a fairly large size”. The distinction Aquilina makes here is a syntactic one: ĠMIEL2 modifies a verb (6) and an adjective (7); such words are typically included in the adverbs word class (see Čéplö 2018: 70-71). ĠMIEL3 modifies a noun (8) in a way that other Maltese adjectives do (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 59-60, Čéplö 2018: 68-70).

Recall that Fabri (1993: 198) describes the atypical use of suffixed pronouns with pseudo-verbs as agreement. This is a very PP way of thinking about person marking on verbs and consistent with Fabri’s theoretical approach. For those of us who do not subscribe to the tenets of PP, however, a more apt description of the function of suffixed pronouns would be subject markers. More specifically, subject markers analogous to those of the affixes of prefixal and suffixal conjugation (or imperfect and perfect in old school semitologist terminology).³⁷ This is in fact exactly what Peterson does (2009: 188) (albeit using the term “subject position” for what I referred to as affixes above) and this is the position I take as well.

This position is then somewhat challenged by examples like (7) and especially (8). In (8), the function of the suffixed pronoun -ha is exactly the same as that of -a, the suffix that derives the feminine form from an adjective. Comparing (8) where ġmiel₂ modifies the noun and the invented - but fully grammatical and natural - example (9) where ġmiel₂ is replaced by the adjective kbir ‘big’, we find that their structure and reading is identical.

It would therefore appear that we are really dealing with agreement here, one that even affects a lexeme whose syntactic behavior is similar to that of (6). And, as (8) shows, the suffixed pronouns on ġmiel₂ can encode agreement not just with the subject, but also with the object. This makes the morphological properties - and the syntactic behavior - of ġmiel₂ different from that of other putative pseudo-verbs and, to be sure, raises a host of questions about the word class ġmiel belongs to. For now, suffice it to say that is perhaps one way in which ġmiel is similar to other putative pseudo-verbs, one that may illuminate some problems with the syntactic properties of pseudo-verbs. I will therefore leave the matter for now and return to this point in the section on syntax.

6.2.3 mess

And finally, another curious lexeme sometimes mentioned in the context of pseudo-verbs (Vanhove 1993): Aquilina’s (1987: 812) entry is divided into 11 subentries, some of which are apparently idiomatic, but the entry paints a picture of a complex semantic range regardless. When looking at corpus data, one can identify three main uses of mess and thus three clearly distinguishable lexemes: first there is the straightforward verb mess₁ (IPFV jmiss, Aquilina’s MESS1) meaning ‘to touch’, both in the physical sense (10), as well as metaphorically (11).

The meaning of the second lexeme, provisionally mess₂ (Aquilina’s MESS3 and MESS4), is given by Aquilina as ‘to be the turn of’ (12). A better translation, one that is familiar to any user of Malta’s public transport service, might be ‘to be next, to follow’ (14).

The English equivalents and the glossing above give the impression that mess₂ is a verb like any other. Upon closer look, however, this analysis falls apart. Firstly, there is the issue of agreement: in (14) where the feminine noun waqfa is modified by an adjective clause (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 35-36),³⁸ the verb should agree in gender and number with its head; yet the conjugation prefix is the masculine j.³⁹ Likewise, in (12), the putative subject il-Kunsilli is plural; and yet the plural ipfv suffix is missing from the verb.

Then there is the question of argument structure and semantic roles: in (12) one, could - disregarding the disagreement - conceivably interpret il-Kunsilli as the subject (or rather the A argument, since the verb appears transitive), explaining the VS order as an interesting variation from SV dominant in Maltese (Čéplö 2023). Such analysis is not tenable in (13): the putative subject Petra is modified by lil which can either be the indirect object (R) marker or the direct object (P) marker when used with nouns high on the animacy scale, such as personal names (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 137). The fact that il-Kunsilli with its inanimate referent is not modified by lil would suggest that the function of lil in (13) is indeed that of the direct object marker.

Considering all of the above, it would appear that mess₂ is an impersonal verb similar in its properties to experiential verbs (Haspelmath and Caruana 2000, Čéplö 2024). As with experiential verbs such as jogħġobni or jidhirlu, the subject - already semantically empty - is not encoded and the 3ipfv prefix is vestigial. Unlike with experiential verbs, however, the experiencer is not encoded as an object marker (whether direct or indirect), i.e. a suffixed pronoun, but rather as an independent nominal. Interestingly, if the noun is high on the animacy scale is and thus subject to (differential) object marking, it is marked correspondingly (compare Haspelmath and Caruana 2000: 246 on the same phenomenon with experiential verbs). Further analysis is needed to fully describe the syntactic and semantic properties of this lexeme; sadly, this is not the place. For now, I will denote this lexeme as imiss₁ based on the principles above.

This brings us to mess₃. Aquilina lists this as subentry MESS5 with the meaning “Idiomatic usage equivalent to English ‘should’” (Aquilina 1987: 812). He does not note so, but corpus data makes it abundantly clear that this meaning - and thus this lexeme - appears solely with suffixed pronouns, specifically the direct object set as evident from the use of -ni in (15).

These forms are morphologically identical to, say, għad₂ and there is no reason they should be treated differently. In fact, Vanhove (1993) who first analyzed these lexemes in detail discusses them side by side with għand₃ as another way of expressing obligation (Vanhove 1993: 306-310, see also Vanhove’s paper in this volume). In addition to the vestigial prefixal forms, however, she also notes the existence of another form of mess₃, this time derived from the suffixal form, i.e. the perfect mess (Vanhove 1993: 307-308). These forms express obligation in the past (“was supposed to”) or counterfactuals and they do occur in the corpora as well. Aside from the variation in the vowel which appears to be conditioned phonologically, they are invariable; the subject is expressed by means of the direct object suffixed pronoun (17).

If the one defining criterion of a pseudo-verb is the use of suffixed pronouns to express the S/A argument, it would appear this lexeme should be considered a pseudo-verb as well. I will therefore include it - i.e. both imiss (that is, imiss₁) and mess - under the lexeme label mess₂ and glossed as oblig in the list of candidates for pseudo-verbhood discussed below.

6.3 Pseudo-verbs and negation

6.3.1 Overview

Fabri (1993: 199-200) identifies the ability to be negated by means of the negative circumfix ma…x (what Lucas 2023: 151-152 refers to as “standard negation”) as the second most important verb-like feature of pseudo-verbs. Peterson (2009: 187-188) merely repeats this observation - and Fabri’s chart (Fabri 1993: 200) - with a single addition: Peterson notes that hemm₂ can also be negated with ma…x (Peterson 2009: 188). Keeping with this tradition, I expand the Peterson/Camilleri master list of (putative) pseudo-verbs from Table 4 with a) hawn₂, b) mess₂, and c) an indication whether a particular lexeme can be negated with ma…x.

Three remarks here: firstly, both forms of mess₂ - discussed in subsection 6.2.3 - can be straightforwardly negated using standard negation, as in (18) and (19).

The same is true of jisim (20) which neither Peterson (2009), nor Camilleri (2016) mention in this context.

It is true that instances of jisim negated using standard negation are few and far between, e.g. in BCv3, there are only 5. It appears, however, that this is the only way to negate jisim and so the paucity of negated examples must be attributed to the inherent semantics of jisim.

Secondly, it should be noted that some speakers reported to me that they do negate some of the pseudo-verbs Peterson originally marked as not taking standard negation; indeed Peterson (2009: 187) mentions this with regard to donn (21) and qis and Camilleri (2016: 126) gives an example with negated qis.

This applies to beħsieb as well, for which a handful of examples can be found in both corpora (22), as well as in texts not included in them, such as (23).

Example (23) is particularly remarkable: it dates from 1913, which shows that this use should not be attributed to recent changes; rather, it seems to be a dialectal one (compare Camilleri 2016: 117 on hemm₂ and suffixed pronouns in a dialect of Maltese). The same seems to apply to donn and qis, except there is not a single instance of negated qis in the corpora. As for the other two, forms like beħsiebnix and donnux do occur, but they are few and far between. I will therefore concur with Peterson and include beħsieb, donn and qis among those putative pseudo-verbs that do not accept standard negation.

And finally, Camilleri notes that għodd can take standard negation as well (Camilleri 2016: 160-161); this, however, is not actual negation, but rather “a morphological effect that has nothing to do with the semantic interpretation yielded” (Camilleri 2016: 161) and is more likely to occur in spoken use of għodd. I will let the reader puzzle out the meaning of the phrase “morphological effect”, suffice it to say that neither BCv3 nor MLRSv4.2 contain a single instance of negated għodd. Camilleri also does not discuss negation of her additions to the list explicitly; she only notes that moħħ₂ does not take standard negation (Camilleri 2016: 128). The indications as to the use of standard negation in the table above are based on an examination of the corpora. For ħsieb₂, only a single possible instance with standard negation was found in MLRSv2 (and none in BCv3) and it is thus included in the same category as e.g. beħsieb.

6.3.2 għad₃

In Table 3 above, I describe two lexemes with the phonetic/graphic sequence għad: għad₁ (see Vanhove 1993: 194-195, Aquilina 1987: 932), a future marker (24) and għad₂, the pseudo-verb (3).

There is, however, at least one more lexeme with the same base. Denoted here as għad₃, Aquilina includes it in the entry for GHAD1 (Aquilina 1987: 933), under subentry (iii), just before the subentry (iv) which covers għad₂:

għad għand + pron. suf. indicates s.th. that has still to be done (kien (inv.) ~ għand, s.th. that had to be done in the past). Both can be negatived [sic] by preceding ma + x suffixed to kien

Note that Aquilina does not give għad₃ as a separate lexeme, but rather as a part of a syntagma, modifying għand₃; also note that the “+ pron. suf.” comment relates to għand, not to għad₂. Aquilina makes a good point about the limited use of għad₃, even though he did not capture the whole truth. The use of għad₃ indeed appears limited, but not just to għand₂. Rather, it would seem that għad₃ is typically used with existentials (25) and experiential verbs (Čéplö 2024), such as fadal ‘to be left’ in (26).

It can also be found with other types of predicates (on which more below), such as copular predicates (27):

More importantly for our purposes, Aquilina’s description of how għad₃ is negated is also not entirely correct: in addition to being negated using the auxiliary kien (Lucas 2023: 157), għad₃ can be negated directly as well (28).

There is hardly any discussion of għad₃ and its properties in literature on Maltese, save for cursory remarks such as Vanhove (1993: 401), a single line in a table in Stolz (2009: 155) and a brief section in Camilleri (2016: 91) to which I will return below. Considering its meaning (obviously related to the pseudo-verb għad₂) and the fact that can be negated just like hemm₂, it is a clear candidate for the inclusion in this word class. Going forward, I will treat it as such.

6.3.3 tant

In his recent overview of negation in Maltese, Lucas (2023) describes three word classes⁴¹ which can take what he terms “standard negation”, i.e. the circumfix ma…x: verbs (Lucas 2023: 151-152), copulas (Lucas 2023:153-155)⁴² and pseudo-verbs (Lucas 2023:155-156). Assuming għad₃ and mess₂ can be added to the last category, there remains one exception to Lucas’s description. Consider (29) below.

The lexeme in these examples that takes the standard negation is tant. As with għad₃ above, if hemm₂ is included among pseudo-verbs because it can take standard negation, so should tant; I will therefore treat it as such.

6.4 Conclusion

In this section, I discussed the morphological (or rather morphosyntactic) properties of pseudo-verbs as described previously while also adding a few more candidates. The picture that emerges (see Table 7 below) is complicated: when it comes to their morphology, the candidates for pseudo-verbhood fall into three distinct categories. This certainly does not lend much credibility to the idea that these lexemes form a single word class. The final answer may lie in their syntactic properties which I will discuss in the next section.

7 Pseudo-verbs and syntax

7.1 Introduction

7.1.1 Overview

Peterson’s master list (Peterson 2009:188) contains 12 items; the paper contains 57 glossed examples. Of those 57, 34 contain pseudo-verbs; of those 34, 22 (i.e. 64%) contain għand₂ or għand₃. il gets 4 examples, fi₂ gets 3, hemm₂ gets 2 and donn, għad₂ and wiehed₂ get one each. This is not unexpected - after all, Peterson himself notes that he is primarily using għand₂/għand₃ (Peterson 2009: 190). Camilleri’s master list (Camilleri 2016: 118) expanded Peterson’s to 18 items, and yet the distribution of glosses in her general section on pseudo-verbs (Camilleri 2016: 115-153) is similarly skewed: 17 for għand₂, 5 for għand₃, 4 for għad₂, 3 for il₂ and moħħ₂, 2 for ħsieb₂, qis, bi₂ and għodd and 1 for mess₂, fi₂, ħaqq₂ and donn each. Recent work has expanded our understanding of the syntactic behavior of other pseudo-verbs (Camilleri 2018 with regard to għodd, Vanhove (2025a and 2025b) with regard to hemm₂ and hawn₂) and to be sure, Peterson did not engage with much of previous work (most notably Vanhove 1993), so neither Petersons’s nor Camilleri’s account are the full picture. Yet even if one takes all of it into consideration, it still remains true that the syntax of most pseudo-verbs is underdescribed. This includes the most basic question, i.e. to what extent are pseudo-verbs really verblike. In this section, I aim to answer that question and refine the description of the syntactic properties of pseudo-verbs, building on previous observations, by Peterson, Camilleri and Vanhove.

7.1.2 Predication

Peterson (2009) titles his paper “An analysis of non-verbal (co-)predication in Maltese” and regularly refers to “predication” and the role pseudo-verbs play in it. Unfortunately, he takes the typological approach to (co-)predication, in that he assumes everyone knows what it is and thus provides no definition and no actionable diagnostics for determining whether a particular lexeme is indeed a predicate. This is understandable: for one, he works within a particular framework to which this sort of question can be directed (Peterson 2009: 197). Such an approach to linguistic analysis is not ideal for those not subscribing to said - or indeed any - framework, but it is an accepted practice. Camilleri who also works in a particular framework (Camilleri 2016: 3) does not define predication either, merely notes that “[pseudo-verbs] may clearly substitute verbal predicates and display similar properties” (Camilleri 2016: 117).

Peterson’s and Camilleri’s lack of a clear definition is even more understandable considering that “predication” lacks a consistent definition in general, even in less formal approaches to linguistic description than PP, RRG or LFG. Some definitions explicitly equate predication with verbal predication, just as Camilleri does. A fine example is Givón (2001) who spells it out, referring to “verbs, or predications” and “verbs, or predicates” (Givón 2001: 105). Dixon adds “typically” to his description of a verbal phrase having a verb as its head (2010b: 1) and notes that the “predicate element” is “generally saturated by a verb”, even though there are other possibilities (Dixon 2010a: 79). These other possibilities are then discussed in Dixon (2010b) in a chapter titled “copula clauses and verbless clauses” (Dixon 2010b: 159-188). Similarly, Bertinetto et al. (2025) in their recent volume on non-verbal predication introduce the concept of predication as “usually associated with the lexical class of verbs”, but add that “the predicate function may also be expressed by Noun / Adjective / Adverb / Quantifier Phrases”. This approach is at least sound in principle, since it is the linguistic equivalent of defining a set by listing all its members; indeed I applied it myself (Čéplö 2018: 6-7).

Other definitions appeal primarily to semantics. For Hengeveld (1992), for example, predicate “specifies a relation or property” (Hengeveld 1992: 25) and predication as “a unit of semantic analysis” (Hengeveld 1992: 26). Croft (2022) also invokes semantics in his definition of predication when he defines predication as “what the speaker is asserting about the referents in a particular utterance” (Croft 2022: 13), where a referent is “what the speaker is talking about” (Croft 2022: 13). This definition can quite straightforwardly be traced to Aristotle’s syllogistic and its division of proposition into subject and predicate (Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Barnes 1994: xvi). Those who invoke it explicitly realize that it does not necessarily reflect the complexity of linguistic data, and so the “simple clause” is often given as “the reference point for grammatical description” (Givón 2001: 105, see also Dixon 2010a: 75). This then raises the question of what is a clause and what is simple. Answering by adding adjectives - as Givón (2001: 105) does with “main, declarative, affirmative, active” - does not help much and only adds more conceptual complexity. Somewhat more helpfully, Givón also expands this with the concept of verbal arguments, i.e. semantic roles (cf. Haspelmath 2011). He then proceeds to the discussion of obligatory and optional arguments and finally a detailed analysis of simple clause types (Givón 2001: 111-171). This approach based on verbal arguments also taken by Dixon (2010a: 76-77) and Croft (2022) who explicitly uses the accepted term for the phenomenon, namely “valency” (Croft 2022: 176-182). Valency is typically associated with verbs only (so originally by Tesnière 1959[2005], see also Creissels 2025: 5 for a recent example), but ultimately can be applied to every word class (Allerton 2006: 301). When applied to a world class other than a verb, the general term “dependent” is often used instead of “argument” (Allerton 2006: 302) and I will follow that practice here.

It is well beyond the scope of this paper to resolve all the terminological issues associated with the term “predication”, nor should the previous paragraphs be construed as anything but a brief overview of strategies various authors have applied when defining the term. My goal here is to establish some working definition and diagnostic criteria to determine if a particular lexeme is used as a predicate. I also wish to do so in line with the principles I articulated in the section on methodology: the study of syntax must start with the study of words and their behavior in utterances. Such study then must include all words, not just those that crosslinguistically are more likely to form utterances. Conceptualizing this as an analysis of a word’s valency is not necessarily neutral, but it at least strives to avoid the preconceptions associated with the definitions of predication above.

Based on these considerations, I will take the semantic route in the sense of Givón (2001) and Croft (2022: 171-182) and adopt the following decision hierarchy (henceforth: DH) going forward:

• DH.1: What dependents must the lexeme take to be considered saturated?
• DH.2: When used in an utterance while saturated, what is the semantic content of the lexeme?
• DH.3: When used in an utterance while saturated, can the dependents be considered to display the properties of SAPTR arguments as they do with verbs and other types of predicates (Haspelmath 2011 and 2025, Dixon 2010a, Bertinetto et al. 2025)?
• DH.4: How comparable are the syntactic properties of the lexeme to those of a verb, especially with regard to negation and modification?

DH.1 requires a brief elaboration: Tesnière (2005[1959]) is generally credited with introducing the term “valency” to modern linguistics, but the concept as applied to language can be ultimately traced to Peirce’s paper The Logic of Relatives (Przepiórkowski 2018). Peirce’s discussion of valency features the concept of “saturation” (Przepiórkowski 2018: 155). This term simply describes a state where all the obligatory arguments of a predicate (in the most traditional sense, i.e. verbal) are present. In this paper, I will use this term, expanded as follows: a “minimally saturated lexeme” is to be taken to mean “a lexeme with all its dependents that are required for its participation in an utterance.” The term “full saturation” then refers to “a lexeme with all its dependents that can be added to a minimally saturated lexeme without changing the meaning.” The term “valency frame” then designates the (types or classes of) lexemes that can be used to saturate a lexeme and consists of individual bonds that are to be saturated; the simple term “saturation” will then refer to the process of attaching another word to the the bond. For brevity’s sake, I will use the terms “S-bond” and “X-bond” and specify them as necessary. As a general rule of thumb, S should be taken to stand for the subject (S/A in the sense of Haspelmath 2011); recall that the primary definition of pseudo-verbs is that the suffixed pronoun marks the subject (S argument). X-bond will then stand for any other bond whose function is further specified as necessary. Should there exist more than two bonds total, the X-bonds will be numbered, e.g. X1, X2 etc.

The distinction between minimal saturation and full saturation deals with the problem of verbal arguments encoded as affixes as well as nominals (nouns, pronouns etc.), both denoting the same referent. To illustrate, consider (30) which is a minimally saturated example of għand₂; (31) is then an example of a fully saturated għand₂.

I am introducing the concept of saturation for two reasons: firstly, to exclude examples such as (32) which are fully grammatical utterances/sentences, but are not even minimally satured. Ocurring in such environments as questions and answers, they do not constitute the typical behavior of this lexeme and are thus excluded from consideration.

In contrast, (33) contains two fully saturated uses of the lexeme għaxar ‘ten’ and kull ‘every’, neither of which is an utterance.

The second reason to introduce the concept of saturation is to simplify the terminology. An astute reader will have noticed that “saturation” is nothing but a generalization of the commonly used concepts like mono-, bi- and trivalent verbs (Creissels 2025 passim) or events (Croft 2022: 210-213, 234-237). The reason I prefer it here is not only brevity, but also neutrality. With the concept of mono-/bi-/trivalency, the assumption is both that it solely involves verbs, but also that the bonds to be saturated are nouns or noun phrases (see e.g. Creissels 2025: 4). If the bond is to be satured by a verb, this generally falls under the rubric of complementization or involves auxiliary verbs. There is nothing wrong with these categories per se, however, they are a priori categories without clear definition and should belong to second-level analysis.

DH.2 is self-evident. And so when using DH.1 and DH.2 combined, for example, we can establish not only the existence of verbal predication (cf. Čéplö 2018: 95), but also that of copular predication (cf. Dixon 2010b: 159-188 for general description, Vanhove 2025a: 789-801 for Maltese) and existential predication (see McNally 2011 for general description, Vanhove 1993: 396-407 and Vanhove 2025a: 809-813 for Maltese). For the purposes of the following discussion, I will assume the existence of said predication types without further elaboration.

As for DH.3, it is essentially designed to answer the question of to what extent can we divide the utterance featuring a minimally saturated instance of the lexeme into a subject and a predicate in the philosophical sense, a referent and something said about that referent (Croft 2022: 13) or X and Y where Y denotes a relation or a property of X. For the purposes of DH.3, I will focus on the semantics as broadly categorized by Dixon (2010b: 104) as the primary defining criterion of the S/A argument. In addition to that, I will use syntactic criteria to deter specific to Maltese, such as agreement.

And finally, DH.4 focuses on the syntactic properties of the dependendant on the X-bond as determined primarily by comparison with other predication types. The primary point of comparison is verbal predicates and their basic properties, i.e. agreement, tense, negation, modification and other participation in the structure of an utterance. For modification, I will especially focus on the agreement with kien which I will in the methodological assumptions underlying this paper consider to be - and refer to as - the only auxiliary in Maltese (Čéplö 2018: 143-149, see also Stolz 2009: 140, footnote 9). Whenever warranted, however, I will also compare the properties of putative pseudo-verbs to copular or existential predicates.

7.1.3 Aims

In what follows, I will analyze the syntactic properties of putative pseudo-verbs. The primary question to be answered is whether they indeed do function as predicates or whether their syntactic function can be explained in some other way. Additionally, I will address other questions that fall broadly under the label of syntax, such as agreement, constituent order and negation.

7.2 Type 1 pseudo-verbs (subj and neg)

7.2.1 fi₂

Vanhove (1993) includes fi₂ in her discussion of locative and existential constructions (Vanhove 1993: 394-396). Her description of the properties of fi₂ is in essence a description of its valency frame. To translate it to the terms used here, a fully saturated fi₂ takes exactly two dependents: a container and a contained,⁴³ in exactly this order (34).

To her semantic analysis, Vanhove adds a syntactic⁴⁴ one: the container preceding fi₂ is the predicate, while the contained that follows fi₂ is the subject (Vanhove 1993: 394). I prefer the opposite analysis, in that it is the container that is the S argument. I do so for two reasons: first, there is the semantic relationship between the S argument, fi₂ and the X argument. If we define it in terms of a container and the contained, the container is the more salient argument semantically (Croft 2022: 36). Secondly and more importantly, the container agrees in number and gender with the suffixed pronoun on fi₂ (Vanhove 1993: 394): it agrees with the feminine container in (35) and in number with the singular container (as opposed to a coordinated contained which would normally require a plural). This mirrors agreement with independent nominal S/A on verbs.

In light of all of this, it appears that fih₂ is not any different from any transitive verb, especially those with similar semantics such as inkluda ‘to include’, ħa in its meaning ‘to contain, to hold’ (Aquilina 1987: 463) or ikkontiena ‘to contain’. Its valency frame (DH.4) is then comparable to that of a transitive verb, in that it requires two bonds to be saturated. The S-bond can be minimally be saturated by the suffixed pronoun and maximally by any nominal. The X-bond can be saturated by nominals such as nouns, pronouns, and headless relative clauses (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 37) as in (35).

7.2.2 għad₂

In previous descriptions, this pseudo-verb was glossed as ‘still’ (Peterson 2009: 187) or its German equivalents ‘noch’ (Fabri 1993:200) and ‘noch sein’ (Schabert 1976: 135). Sutcliffe (1936) describes għad₂ as having “various meanings” (Sutcliffe 1936: 194), but the third one actually involves għad₁. għad₂ then has two meanings based on the syntagmatic relations it is involved in: “with the negative and the perfect” (Sutcliffe 1936: 194), it means ‘not yet’ (36).

Without the negation, għad₂ means ‘still’ (37)

As such, għad₂ falls quite obviously under the rubric of phasal polarity (PhP) and has indeed by discussed in this context by van der Auwera (1997: 30, 31). The standard model of PhP, however, comprises four different expressions (Kramer 2017: 3):

We have seen għad₂ cover the expressions not yet and still where the difference is that in the former, the verb on the X-bond of għad₂ is negated. It should not be surprising that it also covers the expression no longer, in which case għad₂ itself is negated (38).

Auwera argues that the last quadrant - already - is not covered by għad₂, but rather by the adverbs diġà and ġa (van der Auwera 1997: 78).

The examples above contain fully saturated instances of għad₂; in all theses cases, the X-bond is saturated with a verb. The X-bond can also be saturated by nouns, adjectives (40), adverbs (41) - including adverbial expressions featuring prepositions - and existential predicates (42).

Example (42) is particularly interesting from the point of agreement: as described previously (Čéplö 2018: 110), auxiliaries such as kien do not agree with the pivot (McNally 2011: 1833) or subject (Vanhove 1993: 398) of the existential predicate hemm (43).

The picture that emerges is quite clear: the valency frame of għad₂ is saturated by two dependents - a subject (minimally the suffixed pronoun) and another dependent. This dependent is invariably another predicate, i.e. verbal (37) (this includes participles), copular (39) or existential (42). As such, għad₂ does not assert anything about the subject, as is evident if one removes it and the semantic content does not change. What changes is the tense and the phasal polarity; this would then indicate that għad₂ modifies the meaning of its X-bond dependent and is best described as a Tense-Aspect-Mood (TAM) marker in a wider sense (cf. Givón 2001: 285 pp.). If għad₂ were a verb, it would be described as an auxiliary (cf. Croft 2022: 416-419 and Dixon 2010a: 332, see also Vanhove 1993: 173-240 for Maltese): like the auxiliary kien, għad₂ does not carry any semantic content, merely modifies that of the predicate on its X-bond as to TAM. I will adopt the term auxiliary with the given semantic-based definition provisionally from now on and will use it in reference to any other putative pseudo-verbs showing the same properties.

To the previous should be added that in some instances, għad₂ appears to take a clause introduced by li on the X-bond as in (44).

In most of these instances, għad₂ invariably appears in a coordinated structure with the copula kien, raising interesting issues involving the nature of coordination in Maltese for which there is, sadly, no space here. In other instances, the combination of għad₂ and li functions is to be interpreted as an adverbial expression meaning ‘just’ the same way the combination of għad₂ and kif ‘how’ or kemm ‘how (much)’ is (Camilleri 2016: 176-177).

And finally, it should be noted that in some aspects, għad₂ does behave like a verb; for one, it is one of the few pseudo-verbs which almost exclusively agree with the auxiliary kien. To illustrate, consider that of the 2304 instances of għadni (1sg) in MLRSv4.2 that are modified by kien, in 97% the form of kien is also 1sg.

7.2.3 għand₂

Much has already been written on the possessive għand, most recently by Vanhove (2025a: 813-815, see also Vanhove 1993: 409-427). Suffice it to say that għand₂ behaves like any other transitive verb in Maltese would (cf. Stolz 2009: 144 and Camilleri 2018: 237):

• to be minimally saturated, għand₂ requires a suffixed pronoun and the X-bond to be saturated
• the semantic role of the suffixed pronoun is that of a subject
• the semantic role of the dependent on the X-bond is identical to that of a direct object (P) of transitive verbs, down to the use of the DO marker lil for direct objects high on the animacy scale (45)

As with transitive verbs (and also fi₂) the X-bond on għand₂ its X-bond can be saturated by nominals such as nouns, pronouns, and headless relative clauses (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 37).

7.2.4 għand₃

This pseudo-verb, identical in form to għand₂, expresses obligation, also referred to as deontic necessity or d-necessity (Kuteva et al. 2019: 30). Vanhove (1993: 300-306) describes the syntactic properties of għand₃ in detail. To be minimally saturated, għand₃ requires both bonds to be filled; the S-bond by the suffixed pronoun and the X-bond by a verb in the imperfect. It should be noted that the X-bond can also be saturated by kien in its function as a copula. In such case, kien must also be minimally saturated; in other words, the X-bond can be saturated by a copular clause with kien as the copula (46).

Considering its semantics and valency, għand₃ is best described as a modal verb or auxiliary, equivalent to other verbs in this semantic grouping described for Maltese (Vanhove et al. 2009). For completeness sake, I will add that both għand₂ and għand₃ favor invariable kien as the auxiliary in all persons. As an example, consider that there is not a single instance of kont ikolli in BCv3 or MLRSv4.2 as opposed to 385 and 492 instances, respectively, of kien ikolli.

7.2.5 ħaqq₃

Camilleri includes the phonetic/graphic sequence ħaqq on her master list of pseudo-verbs with two meanings, ‘what if’ and ‘to deserve’ (Camilleri 2016: 118). I classified the former as lexeme ħaqq₂ and the latter as ħaqq₃. Camilleri only addresses the meaning ‘to deserve’ directly in a comment in a footnote much later (Camilleri 2016: 196). Sadly, her analysis is too muddled in issues of etymology and LFG theory to be useful beyond establishing the existence of ħaqq₃ as a lexeme (in the sense used here). Moreover, Camilleri does not give a single glossed example, nor does she discuss its properties in any detail.

(47) and (48) illustrate the typical use of ħaqq₃, the former with present reference, the latter with past reference.

As evident from the examples above, the S-bond on ħaqq₃ is minimally saturated by the suffixed pronoun and maximally by a nominal (noun, pronoun etc.) which denotes the deserving entity. The X-bond is then typically saturated by another nominal (47) or another predicate, such as a verb (48).

While nominals and predicates are the most common way to saturate the X-bond on ħaqq₃, it also takes another predicate introduced by the subordinator li (cf. Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 211), such as the one - coincidentally involving għand₂ - in (49), which also illustrates the use of standard negation with ħaqq₃.

At first glance, the picture is simple: in terms of valency frame (DH.4), ħaqq₃ generally behaves as a transitive verb would, in that it requires two bonds to be saturated. The X-bond accepts a nominal or another predicate introduced by li⁴⁵ in the semantic role of P, i.e. direct object. In the standard analysis of Maltese syntax, structures where a predicate has the same semantic role as the object of the verb are referred to as complement clauses (Borg and Fabri 2016: 419) and the subordinators that introduce them as complementizers; I will use these terms from now whenever expedient.

The bare verbal predicate, copula or a passive construction (50) on the X-bond complicate the picture somewhat, especially considering the fact that with verbs, prefixal conjugation is used even with past reference (48).

As with beħsieb (see section 7.3.2), this makes sense semantically: the utterance expresses a wish for the present or the future, hence the exclusive use of the prefixal conjugation. In terms of syntax, however, this is atypical for transitive verbs which typically only take nominals and complement clauses as the second (i.e. non-A) dependent. Rather, this behavior reminds of e.g. the verb af to know: like ħaqq₃, af can take nominals, clauses introduced by li (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 212) and verbs (including pseudo-verbs and kien) in its X-bond (or P slot). With verbs and pseudo-verbs, however, af - more specifically, its prefixal form - takes on a different role: it denotes participant-internal possibility (or pi-possibility, Kuteva et al. 2019: 32), as in (51) (cf. Vanhove et al. 2009: 330). Similarly, one could postulate a grammaticalization path from lexical ‘to deserve’ to deontic necessity ‘must, need’. And in fact, this is what Diewald et al. 2021 describe for German. This possibility is doubly intriguing since there is indeed a lexeme with such meaning in other varieties of Arabic, such as Egyptian (Vanhove et. al 2009: 353, Woidich 2006: 316).

Whether this is a case of parallel development or indeed whether this grammaticalization is even happening are questions I will leave for the future. For now, I conclude with two remarks: firstly, for all the unanswered questions, the semantics and the valency frame of ħaqq₃ are both comparable to verbs. One exception is the issue of agreement with the auxiliary kien, on which my second concluding remark: of the 902 cases of ħaqq₃ in BCv3, kien agrees with ħaqq₃ (whether in person or in number) in only 1.5% of cases.

7.2.6 il

Peterson (2009) gives the meaning of il as ‘for a long time’ (Peterson 2009: 187) and ‘for a long time already’ (Peterson 2009: 188). When reviewing il in use, the ‘for a long time’ reading is certainly viable, especially is there no further specification of the time period (52).

However, when a specific time period is included, this general reading becomes untenable. For one, whether an hour (53) qualifies as “long time” is surely in the eye of the beholder. More importantly however, if a truly long period of time is meant, it is typically specified, as in (54) with the quantifier/adverb ħafna.

It would therefore seem that if one were to assign a meaning to il, it would be ‘for a (unspecified) period of time’. Or rather, as Aquilina’s entry for IL1 has it “time measured back to a point in the past” (Aquilina 1987: 565). In his entry for IL, Aquilina describes two uses of il: IL1 where - in the terms used in this paper - the X-bond is saturated by a noun (presumably indicating a period of time, although Aquilina is not that specific) where the meaning is as given above. In the other use, IL2, where the X-bond is saturated by a verb in the prefixal conjugation, the meaning of il is ‘to last, to continue (of time taken by an action)’ (Aquilina 1987: 565).

I propose an alternative analysis, noting first that the X-bond on il cannot be saturated by a noun alone (55). A noun with a temporal reference can be added if necessary (53), but it is not required for minimal or full saturation.

Secondly, it is not only with verbs in the prefixal conjugation - and participles, as Camilleri (2016: 165) notes - that il can be saturated. Copular predicates (56) and even existential predicates (57) can saturate the X-bond as well.

In her detailed discussion of il, Camilleri (2016: 162-173) assigns five different meanings to the phonological/graphic sequence il:

1. adj meaning ‘ago’ (Camilleri 2016: 162)
2. The lexical meaning of ‘long for’ (Camilleri 2016: 162)
3. ‘long time/quite a bit’ interpretation: verbless construction (Camilleri 2016: 163)
4. ‘long time/quite a bit’ interpretation: lexicalVP complement (Camilleri 2016: 164)
5. ‘long time’ interpretation: CP complement (Camilleri 2016: 167)

Meanings 1 and 2 (dubious classification of ilu in 1 as an adjective aside) are not relevant for our purposes. Camilleri’s meaning 3 addresses precisely cases like (56) describing this function of il as “some sort of copula” (Camilleri 2016: 163). Camilleri’s meaning 4 then addresses instances where the X-bond on il is saturated by a verb in the prefixal conjugation or, as she correctly observes, a participle (Camilleri 2016: 165). Camilleri describes meaning 4 of il as “some sort of endurance in time that extends up to the present” (Camilleri 2016: 164). Naturally, the distinction Camilleri makes between meanings 3 and 4 only exists because of the theoretical framework she subscribes to, i.e. LFG, which makes a distinction between non-verbal predication and verbal predication. The more appropriate generalization of the behavior of il in terms used in this paper would be that the X-bond on il is saturated by other predicates; futhermore, in all previous instances, the function of il is a modifier to those predicates. More specifically, il is a TAM marker - or rather, an aspect marker - expressing the continuous unfinished nature of an event or state begun in a moment in relative past to the utterance.

There is, however, one more way to saturate il. Consider (58) and (59) where the X-bond on il is saturated by a verb (with its dependents) introduced by a subordinate conjunction. Note that in this case, the verb can also be in the suffixal conjugation (58).

It would seem only subordinators biex - typically a subordinating conjunction of purpose (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 41) hence the gloss - and li can appear here; both in the function of a complementizer (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 3). This analysis is, however, incomplete: as Camilleri astutely observes, in these structures - which in her analysis fall under meaning 5 - the complementizer ma can be used as well (Camilleri 2016: 168). Camilleri notes that the complementizer role of ma is given very little attention in literature on Maltese (Camilleri 2016: 168) and this still remains true. There is no space to remedy that here, suffice it to point out that instances of il with its X-bond saturated with a verb introduced by ma are some of the most typical uses of il (60).

In a traditional analysis, the syntactic structure attached to the X-bond would be referred to as a subordinate clause (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 8-12). But what is then the status of il? The same traditional analysis would describe it as the main clause, but this only raises more questions, since the putative main clause in, say, (59) cannot stand on its own. One way to analyze it in a traditional way would be to describe it as a type of cleft an equivalent to the English it-cleft, a “special copular construction” (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 267). And indeed, such constructions do exist in Maltese; consider (61) with kien as the only constituent of the main clause and, nota bene, no actual referent.

To be sure, the type of the main clause in (61) is different, but that is understandable: kien can take other dependants aside from the li clause, such as the adverbial clause (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 39); together with them kien can function as a more universal clefting device, providing a broader context (time, place, reason, even evidentiality). In contrast, il cannot take any other dependents and thus can only denote the fact that an event or state expressed by the predicate on its X-bond continues to the time of utterance.

This putative role of il as a clefting device is also evident in cases where there is no agreement between il and the predicate on its X-bond (cf. Camilleri 2016: 169). Consider example (62).

In such cases, there is not only a lack of agreement between il and the verb on its X-bond, but there is also no actual referent for the suffixed pronoun, same as in (61). This shows that whether one accepts the traditional analysis of such constructions as clefting, or indeed decides to classify them as a separate type of predication as I have done (Čéplö 2018: 104-108), il can participate in them in a very similar way kien can. This then raises the question whether there are any other ways in which il is copula-like, but it is one that must be left for another day.

To conclude this brief overview of the syntactic properties of il, I will note that in 80% of the nearly 5000 instances of il in BCv3 directly modified by the auxiliary kien, the auxiliary agrees with il. It is unclear what conditions this distribution and this question too will be left for future work.

7.2.7 jisim

Turning now to the most straightforward pseudo-verb, (63) illustrates a fully saturated instance of jisim.

The meaning of jisim is then ‘to be called, to bear the name of’. Its S-bond is minimally saturated by a pronoun indicating the entity to bear the name, the X-bond is then the name. Typically, the X-bond dependent is a proper noun or an equivalent, like an entire phrase (book title, band name etc.). In some cases, however, jisim does not assign a uniquely identifiable name to the entity attached to the S-bond, but rather gives the phonetic/graphic sequence used to denote the entity (64).

To conclude this brief description: as noted in section 6.3.1), jisim can be negated using standard negation. The fact that it does not occur very often can be attributed to the semantics of jisim, as well as to its relative low frequency in corpora, where e.g. in BCv3, it only occurs 2000 times (9.1 per million). As for agreement with the auxiliary, jisim strongly favors invariant kien: of the 410 instances of kien + jisim in BCv3, only 3 (0.73%) agree.

7.2.8 mess₂

As described by Vanhove (1993: 307-310 and in this volume, section 3.1.3.3), mess₂ expresses deontic necessity in much the same way għand₃ does. What has been said about the valency frame għand₃ applies to mess₂ as well, down to copular clauses with kien saturing the X-bond (65).

In addition to this, however, it appears that mess₂ can also take a verb in the suffixal conjugation (the perfect) when used with a past reference (66) (cf. Vanhove et al. 2009: 334).

And as we have seen in section 6.2.3), the X-bond on mess₂ can also be saturated by il (and its dependents). This is not possible with għand₃, but still suggests at least some degree of similarity between kien and il. And finally, also much like with kien and il, the X-bond on mess₂ can be saturated with complement clauses introduced by li (67). There are only a handful of such structures in BCv3, but they are certainly possible.

When it comes to agreement with the auxiliary kien, mess₂ is one of those putative pseudo-verbs that overwhelmingly prefer the invariable 3sgm of kien. To illustrate, of the 51 instances in BCv3 where the X-bond on mess₂ is saturated by a verb or a copular kien, only twice does kien agree.

7.2.9 imiss₂

Recall that in the section on the morphological properties of pseudo-verbs - specifically on the role of suffixed pronouns - I defined three lexemes derived from the verb mess; one of them - mess₂ - is discussed above. As it turns out, that is not all for mess and pseudoverbs: a closer look at the prefixal forms derived from the verb mess consisting of imiss + suffixed pronoun, suggests that there might be one more lexeme that seems to behave like a pseudo-verbs. Consider (68) and (69), which contain a minimally saturated instance of said putative lexeme where the X-bond is saturated by a nominal.

It would appear that this lexeme is equal in meaning to mess₂. The minimally saturated instance such as the one in (68) requires the suffixed pronoun which encodes an S/A argument whose semantic role is best defined as Recipient (or perhaps Experiencer). The X-bond is then saturated by a noun, indicating the object to be received (or the event to be experienced).

Recalling the definition of a lexeme in the subsection on “Lexical items” (3.4) above, we are now faced with a decision. Said definition says nothing about the morphosyntactic behavior of a lexeme - more specifically, the obligatoriness of suffixed pronouns to marked the S/A argument - and only relied on the differences in meaning. In the case of all putative pseudo-verbs discussed previously, these happened to be considerable; my definition of a lexeme was thus fully sufficient to establish them as separate lexemes. That is not the case here: the meaning of mess₂ is not any different from the meaning of the imiss discussed in this subsection (henceforth: imiss₂) and the only difference between, the impersonal verb mess₂ and the pseudo-verb imiss₂ is the fact that the latter obligatorily takes suffixed pronouns. According to the decision hierarchy for assigning word class to lexemes adopted above (cf. Čéplö 2018: 66), imiss₂ with its aberrant morphology and syntax should be classified as a member of the pseudo-verb word class and I will treat it as such. Whether it should be considered a separate lexeme is a different question, one that I will leave for another time.

And finally, a note on the syntactic properties of imiss₂. There are too few examples of this pseudo-verb in the corpora to make a definite judgment, but it would seem that like mess₂, it accepts standard negation (70). It is for this reason that I am including it here - out of order - under Type 1 pseudo-verbs.

I will also note here that the X-bond on imiss₂ can also be saturated by verbs in the prefixal conjugation (Azzopardi 2022: 95) and predicates introduced by li (71) and biex (72).

The aforementioned paucity of examples in the corpora does not allow for any conclusion regarding its agreement with the auxiliary kien.

7.3 Type 2 pseudo-verbs (subj only)

7.3.1 bi₂

bi₂ is one of Camilleri’s additions to Peterson’s list of putative pseudo-verbs. Camilleri gives two examples, both of which feature the definite noun ġuħ ‘hunger’ on the X-bond. The example (73) from BCv3 contains a semantically related noun on the X-bond; note that bi₂ uses direct object suffixed pronouns.

This pseudo-verb appears to be limited to one particular domain, that of bodily sensations: only ‘hunger’ and ‘thirst’ are attested in corpora and speakers reported to me the use of bi₂ with ngħas ‘sleep’ and pipì ‘urine’. Additionally, it appears to be dialectal or perhaps obsolescent, as a brief survey of speakers indicated that at least some of them are not familiar with it.⁴⁶ The semantic limitation makes sense in light of the semantics of bi₂, especially its patientive component (Stolz and Vorholt 2025: 1034); compare English “to be with child”. To confirm this, as well as to describe its syntactic properties, more data is required.

7.3.2 beħsieb

beħsieb is one of the four pseudo-verbs Peterson adds to Fabri’s list (Peterson 2009: 186) and one of those he does not discuss any further, not even giving a single example; the same is true of Camilleri (2016). (74) and (75) contain two examples of the typical usage of beħsieb; note (75) which shows that beħsieb takes the direct object suffixed pronouns.

A minimally saturated beħsieb thus requires a suffixed pronoun and a verb. In both cases, it is quite obvious that the suffixed pronoun expresses the S argument (Agent or Cogitator) as it would with verbs. This is also evident from the person marking of the verbs on the X-bond which then further participates in a verbal chain (Stolz 2009). These verbs occur invariably in the prefixal conjugation, which is consistent with the semantics of beħsieb and the semantics of the prefixal conjugation: since beħsieb expresses intention, the action/state/event that lies in the future relative to the point of utterance. This also applies to utterances with a past reference, as in (76).

It should be noted that the category of verbs that can saturate the X-bond on beħsieb include the copular verb kien and għand₂ in its future form jkoll- (77).

There is one more way to sature the X-bond on beħsieb, namely with a predicate (a verb or the copular verb kien) introduced by the complementizer li (78).

This is by far the minority option: of the roughly 13300 instances of beħsieb in MLRSv4.2, the X-bond is filled in this way in some 200 cases.

The meaning and function of beħsieb is then clear: it does not carry meaning on its own, rather it expresses the intention to carry out the action/induce the state expressed by the predicate on its X-bond. beħsieb is thus best described as a modal auxiliary of boulomaic necessity (b-necessity) (Kuteva et al. 2019: 31).

As for negation, as discussed previously, beħsieb can be negated using standard negation (22). This use, however, is exceedingly rare: there are only 10 such examples in all of MLRSv4.2 and 5 in BCv3. The typical way to negate beħsieb is with negative pronominal copula (Lucas 2023: 163-164, henceforth: pronominal negation), such as mhux for 3sgm (79), mhix for 3sgf and mhumiex for 3pl.

This then brings us to the question of agreement. For both the pronominal negation as well a the auxiliary, there are two options: either the 3sgm form (mhux or kien, respectively) is used invariably, or the negator/the auxiliary agree with the form of beħsieb. The corpus data offers a complicated picture: as for pronominal negation, there are 34 instances of negated beħsiebhom total, 18 of which are negated with mhux, 16 with mhumiex (3pl). With the auxiliary kien, the picture is slightly less muddled: in 46 instances of beħsiebhom modified by kien out of total 71, the auxiliary agrees with beħsiebhom; in the remaining 25, the invariable form of kien is used. The final ratio is 2:1 in favor of agreement. The picture thus remains unclear and only future research on what conditions this (dis)agreement can provide a definitive answer.

And finally, a remark on the orthography and possibly the grammaticalization of beħsieb: in MLRSv4.2, there are 13,231 instances of beħsieb derived from three bases (beħsieb-, biħsieb-, fiħsieb-). The corpus also contains 3,692 instance of a combination of prepositions bi and fi with ħsieb + suffixed pronoun. It would appear that for all intents and purposes, these are functionally equivalent to beħsieb.

7.3.3 donn

The meaning of this pseudo-verb is given as ‘as if’ (Stolz 2009: 142) and its German equivalent ‘als ob’ (Fabri 1993: 200); Peterson’s full gloss reads ‘as if, like, appear’ (Peterson 2009: 187), Camilleri’s ‘appear/as though/ as if’ (Camiller 2016: 118). To illustrate, consider (80) and (81).

Both examples feature a fully saturated instance of donn where the S-bond is saturated by the suffixed pronoun and the X-bond is saturated by a verb. The independent nominal subject - a generic noun in (80) and a proper noun in (81) - illustrates that in these cases, there is a division to be found between - to use Croft’s terminology (Croft 2022: 13) - a referent and something that is said about it. The something being said, however, is not expressed by donn. This is evident by removing donn from both examples which does not change the semantic content, only the speaker’s/writer’s assesment of it with regard to whether the proposition expressed by the predicate actually happened or not. This is best described as a change in mood from realis to irrealis (Dixon 2012: 22). The actual function of donn is then that of a TAM modifier or auxiliary (see section 7.2.2), indicating irrealis mood, anchored at the time of the utterance. For completeness’s sake, I observer that the types of predicates that can saturate the X-bond include copular (82) and existential (83) ones.

This would then indicate that, like with għad₂, what saturates the X-bond on donn is another predicate, be it verbal, copular or existential. And, like with għad₂ and il₂, in example (83) donn shows agreement with the subject of the existential predicate hemm₂.

Note the order of the elements in the utterance: in (80) to (82), the S-bond dependent (or, plainly, subject) comes first, donn follows and the X-bond dependent comes after. In (83), donn comes first, then the existential predicate hemm₂ and finally the referent whose existence is asserted comes after. In both cases, this is expected, as SV - with V being the putative pseudo-verb donn here - is the default order, except for existentials (Čéplö 2023). Consider, however, (84) which contains a fully saturated verbal predicate on the X-bond.

The question is now what is it we are looking at: this could simply be a variation in the order of subject (S), auxiliary (a) and predicate (V), i.e. aVs. In such case, the question is what conditions this variation. We could also view this as one more way to saturate the X-bond on donn, this time with a fully saturated verbal predicate. In this case, however, it must be noted that such structures are not possible with għad₂ which I also describe as an auxiliary. What to make of it? Before trying to answer this question, there is one more thing to say about the valency frame of donn. Consider examples (85) and (86).

In both these examples, the X-bond on donn is saturated by a verb introduced by li. There is a distinction, however: in (85), the suffixed pronoun has an actual referent, also present here as the independent nominal subject Għawdex ‘Gozo’. This would only mean that the list items that can saturate the X-bond on donn needs to be expanded by verbs introduced by li (and, unsurprisingly, biex, as is the case with il). Such an analysis also applies to cases like (87) which superficially looks similar to (86).

In (87), the valency frame of donn is still intact, the suffixed pronoun on donn has the same referent as the subject of the verb introduced by li. The only difference here is the word order. Having reviewed such examples in corpora, my hypothesis is that such structures are favored with syntactically heavy subjects; this, however, still remains to be confirmed.

In contrast, there is no actual referent for the suffixed pronoun in example (86); this is also evident from the discrepancy in number between the suffixed pronoun on donn and the subject of the verb introduced by li. Rather, much like with il in (58) and (59), the use of donn in (86) can also be analyzed as a cleft; this is, in fact, what Sutcliffe did when he gave ‘it seems’ as one of the meanings of donn (Sutcliffe 1936: 196). As with kien and il, donn provides a frame for the event denoted by the verb on the X-bond; in our case, turning it to irrealis. It is possible that structures like (87) are the ultimate origin of structures like (86); in turn, structures like (87) can then be traced to structures like (84). In such case, one could view (84) and (87) as two instances of the same phenomenon, i.e. the X-bond on donn being saturated by a verb with all its dependents or what in classical analysis would be called a full clause. The only difference between the two is then whether they are introduced by a complementizer like li or not.

For now, suffice it to conclude that similarly to il, donn also strongly favors agreement with the auxiliary kien. In 62 total instances of kien + donnha, only a single 1 (1.61%) does not display agreement; for the 56 instances of kien + donnhom, there are only two that do not agree (3.57%).

7.3.4 fejn

There is one item missing from the discussion of atypical use of suffixed pronouns. The lexeme in question is fejn and it is traditionally classified as an interrogative pronoun (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1993: 24). As such, it possesses quite straightforward syntactic properties: in addition to its basic use in questions of place (or direction) (88), it can also be used to introduce locational adjective clauses (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1993: 212, Stolz and Vorholt 2025: 172-175), as in (89).

If the question targets the location of an entity with a present reference (i.e. is it the interrogative equivalent of a present-tense locational copula clause), it includes the pronominal copula (Vanhove 2025a: 795-796), as in (90).

In such questions, the copula can be expressed as the suffixed pronoun on the interrogative pronoun itself (91).

This is the minority option; for some 700 cases of fejn + hu in interrogative utterances in BCv3, there are only 12 instances of fejnu.

Like simple fejn, this fejn + suffixed pronoun - henceforth designated fejn₂ in contrast to the interrogative pronoun fejn₁ - can also be used to introduce locational adjective clauses, as in (92) and (93).

This is where things get complicated. In their analysis of the syntax of fejn, Stolz and Vorholt (2022: 188-189) make a distinction: the fejni without any dependents in (92) would be an instance of wh-prep or simply an instance of prepositional use. In contrast, the fejnhom in (93) featuring a dependent would be described by them as “predicative fejn”. Stolz and Vorholt do not discuss this predicative function of fejn₂ any further, but the distinction here is clearly equivalent to that between, say, għandi as an instance of the preposition għand and the same wordform as an instance of għand₂ or għand₃.

I do not find their arguments for the distinction between the prepositional use and the predicative use of fejn + suffixed pronoun convincing. The one relying on “genitive case assignment” (Stolz and Vorholt 2022: 190) is particularly weak. In simple terms, this involves instances of fejn₂ that saturate the preposition minn, such as (94).

Leaving aside the questionable application of such terms as “genitive” crosslinguistically, the issue is simple: according to Stolz and Vorholt, fejn + nominal “counts as PP [= prepositional phrase]” (Stolz and Vorholt 2022: 190), but this analysis only works in case of fejn₂ if said suffixed pronoun is used instead of a free pronoun. Consequently, according to Stolz and Vorholt, fejnha in (94) must be interpreted as something along the lines of “her place/her location”. This then raises the question of what to do with equivalent constructions like (95) where the preposition minn is saturated by a straightforward verbal (or copular) adjective clause (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 35-36) introduced by fejn.

Following Stolz and Vorholt’s logic - which is, to be sure, not a unique mode of analysis, but rather a reflection of a particular way of thinking about language - one would have to analyze the clearly parallel structures in (94) and (95) in two radically different ways. Whether this is desirable and what profit would one derive from that is another question for the sociology of the field, ultimately immaterial for the purposes of this study; as Stolz and Vorholt rightly observe elsewhere in their paper, the analysis “depends entirely on the syntactic model the descriptive linguists adhere to” (Stolz and Vorholt 2022: 190). What matters here is that Stolz and Vorholt describe fejn₂ as a predicate when they speak of the predicative function of fejn₂ and I at least partially agree when I describe the structures in which fejn₂ participates in e.g. (92) and (93) as adjective (relative) clauses (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 35-36, Camilleri 2023). In short, all three of us are looking at a lexeme that takes suffixed pronouns and participates in predication and should thus be considered a candidate for pseudo-verbhood in the sense of Fabri (1993) and Peterson (2009).

The question is now to what extent fejn₂ really is a predicate in the sense of the diagnostic hierarchy (DH.1-DH.4) above. It is evident that the suffixed pronoun encodes the S/A argument and we have already seen in (93) that it can take independent subjects, just like verbal or copular predicates. This is also the case for adjective clauses introduced by fejn₂, such as (96); note the VS - or rather subject second - order characteristic of subordinate close.

Whether minimally or fully saturated, however, fejn₂ can only appear in two types of structures - a question and a adjective clause - where the latter is an extension of the former. Its function is thus more severely limited than that of any other type of predicate, indeed more any other type of putative pseudo-verb from Table 7. Additionally, it is decidedly non-verbal in any other way: it cannot be negated, it cannot be modified, it does not even seem to be subject to tense. For the last point, consider (92): the entire utterance is set in the past, yet fejn₂ does not - or indeed cannot - express tense as it would with verbal or copular predicates such as (95). And the interrogative use fejn₂, naturally, always takes place with present reference.

In short, if fejn₂ is a predicate, it constitutes a unique type, very much unlike verbs and even those of its fellow candidates for pseudo-verbhood which that resemble verbs the least.

7.3.5 għodd

With the exception of għand₂, għodd is the best described pseudo-verb, solely due to Camilleri’s work (Camilleri 2016: 154-192, Camilleri 2018). To briefly summarize her findings, the semantics of għodd is that of an avertive, i.e. denoting a state or action narrowly avoided (97) or a proximative, i.e. denoting a state or action just about to happen (98) (Kuteva 1998).

As such, the X-bond of għodd is invariably saturated by a verb in the suffixal conjugation, while the S-bond is minimally saturated by suffixed pronouns and maximally by suffixed pronouns and a co-referential noun or pronoun. It is then the verb on the X-bond that denotes something about the referent of the dependent on the S-bond (DH.3). għodd, on the other hand, functions merely as a TAM marker providing an avertive (97) or proximative (98) meaning.

In terms of agreement with the auxiliary, għodd favors agreement: of the 210 occurrences of għoddhom modified by kien in BCv3, 76% agree. What conditions the variation is a question for the future.

7.3.6 ħaqq₂

In her master list of pseudo-verbs, Camilleri lists ħaqq as a single item with two meanings: ‘deserve’ and ‘what if’ (Camilleri 2016: 118). The former meaning has been discussed here under the label ħaqq₃ (section 7.2.5). Camilleri discusses the ‘deserve’ meaning minimally and thus does not give a single example. Her two examples of ħaqq feature ħaqq₂ and what can be inferred from it is the fact that ħaqq₂ is always the first link in a chain of pseudo-verbs (Camilleri 2016: 196) and that the agreement between ħaqq₂ and the verb that - in the terms of this paper - saturates its X-bond (Camilleri 2016: 197) is optional. For completeness’s sake, I reproduce here the first example with my glossing and Camilleri’s original translation.

I have scoured both BCv3 and MLRSv4.2 for examples of ħaqq₂, but did not find a single one. While this fact is interesting in itself and one could speculate about its causes, it also means we must defer any analysis of ħaqq₂ until more data is collected. I will therefore not address it going forward.

7.3.7 ħsieb₂

Camilleri lists ħsieb₂ on her master list (Camilleri 2016: 118) giving its meaning as ‘be attentive to/be concerned with/thinking about’. She notes that ħsieb₂ can take both the direct object as well as the possessive pronoun set (Camilleri 2016: 127) and gives two examples (Camilleri 2016: 128, 129). In both her examples, the S-bond is saturated by 1sg suffixed pronoun and both feature an element introduced by the preposition fi on the X-bond. The latter is also true of the example (100) from BCv3 below.

A detailed review of corpus data reveals that this is indeed one of the major ways the X-bond on ħsieb₂ is saturated. The other two major ways involve subordinating conjunctions introducing verbal predicates, namely li (101) and biex in (102) which also features an independent nominal subject.

The first type of saturation is equivalent to that of verbs that take non-canonical objects (Stolz and Levkovych 2024), specifically those introduced by prepositions such as nduna ‘to notice’ (cf. also Stolz and Vorholt 2025: 626-627) (103).

The second and third type of X-bond saturation involving clauses introduced by li and biex, respectively, recall what has been said with regard to the valency of il in section 7.2.6). In that case, I pointed out that the - in classic terms - subordinate clauses raise questions with regard to the nature of the main clause and noted the similarity of such structures to clefts involving the copula. In the case of ħsieb₂, the questions regarding the nature of the main clause remain: in (102), for example, it would consist of the ungrammatical (104).

This time, however, the explanation for the syntactic goings on is different and may lie in structures like (105).

In this example, the noun ħsieb₁ is the subject (pivot) of an existential predicate and it is apparently modified by an adjective clause introduced by biex. This would then raise the question of whether what we’re looking at in (101) is simply an instance of ħsieb₁ with the suffixed pronoun in its possessive function. Likewise, (100) with its X-bond dependent introduced by the locative preposition fi could then simply be interpreted as a copular clause with no copula (Lucas and Čéplö 2020: 286) or specifically what Vanhove refers to as juxtaposition of noun phrases and prepositional phrases (Vanhove 2025a: 788-794).

There are two arguments against that: the first involves the independent nominal subject like that in (102). The entire structure would have to interpreted as some sort of apposition of the proper name as the referent and another nominal modified by an adjective clause, so something along the lines of “Ermelinda, her thought that is on pretending to be a queen”. Secondly, and more importantly with regard to DH.4, there is the issue of negation. If, for instance, (100) were to be interpreted as a copular clause, its negation would look like (106).

Such structures do not exist in the corpora. Rather, if one wants to negate structures like (100), the negation is placed before ħsiebu as it is with other pseudo-verbs that do not take standard negation (107).

In light of all of this, it is fair to say that ħsieb₂ is indeed verb-like in its semantics and its syntax. I conclude with two observations: firstly, its meaning is best rendered as ‘to be thinking of/about’ and this is the meaning I will use going forward. Secondly, as for agreement with the auxiliary kien, there is too little data to draw any definite conclusion: for the 10 occurrences of ħsiebhom modified by kien in BCv3, only 40% agree; with the 6 instances of ħsiebi, 33% agree. In MLRSv4.2, the picture is somewhat clearer: of the 25 instances of ħsiebhom modified by kien, only 20% agree; in the 5 instances of ħsiebi, 40% do.

7.3.8 kull

In Table 3 above, I described two lexemes with the phonetic/graphic sequence kull: kull₁ meaning “all” and classified as a quantiter and kull₂, the putative pseudo-verb.

This is not entirely correct. Going by the definition of lexeme in section 3.4), there are at least four different lexemes with the phonetic/graphic sequence kull. The first one is kull₁, a distributive quantifier, whose meaning is best rendered in English as “each, every” (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 73). kull₁ invariably precedes the modified noun which is indefinite and singular (108).

The second lexeme is kull₂, the universal quantifier meaning “all”. According to Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander (1997: 134), kull₂ follows the noun where the noun can be either plural or a singular collective and obligatorily takes a suffixed pronoun: 3sgf with plural nouns (109), 3sgm with collective nouns (110).

The third lexeme - kull₃ - is quite transparently an extension of kull₂. It is, however, not identical with it: kull₂ expresses straightforward universal quantification, i.e. a set relation. In mathematical terms, kull₂ denotes members of a set S defined by property P. That the set can be denoted by a singular noun as in (110) is only relevant for its syntactic properties, i.e. agreement, but not for its meaning.

In contrast, kull₃ always relates to a single entity that does not consist of other individual entities, but rather denotes a division of its referent into parts. As such, it belongs to the category of fractional quantifiers (Bolinger 1972: 108, Bulalang 2024: 102). In Maltese, this includes such words as nofs ‘half’ (or ‘1/2’ in mathematical notation), terz ‘one third’ (‘1/3’) and kwart ‘one fourth’ (‘1/4’). kull₃ then carries the meaning ‘1/1’ or ‘whole, entire’, as in (111) and (112).

An observant reader will have undoubtedly noted that this use of kull (which in varieties of Arabic was already described by Sībawayh, cf. Ullmann 2012: 356-357) shows some parallels with ġmiel: like ġmiel, kull₃ modifies a nominal. Also much like ġmiel, the suffixed pronoun on kull₃ appears to be encode agreement with the nominal the same way an adjective would.

For now, we will leave this aside and turn to the putative pseudo-verb kull, now renumbered to kull₄. This pseudo-verb is barely discussed in any of the literature: Peterson (2009) and Camilleri (2016) do not give a single glossed example, and so it would appear that the inclusion of this lexeme on their respective lists of pseudo-verbs is only due to Fabri. Fabri gives one example of its use (Fabri 1993: 199, reproduced as (113) below with my glossing and translation) and then repeats it adding negation (Fabri 1993: 200).

Note the English translation: “We are all sand” would have been just as good (if a bit ambiguous in this particular case), but the wording I chose reflects the original meaning of kull₃. Camilleri (2016: 123) uses the same translation and groups kull₄ with fi₂ as denoting inclusion (Camilleri 2016: 129). This label does not strike me as particularly useful since it implies a set-member relationship between the referent on the S-bond and that on the X-bond; the term “container” and “contained” (see section 7.2.1) is more apt here.

The basic properties of kull₄ are therefore clear:

• it is saturated by a nominal on the S-bond and another on the X-bond (DH.1)
• kull₄ denotes that these nominals stand, as noted, in a container-contained relationship where the contained fills all the available space in the container (DH.2)

This would suggests that the valency frame of kull₄ is very much like that of a transitive verb or at least its fellow pseudo-verb fi₂. Upon closer reflection, however, this analysis falls apart. Consider (114) and (115) below.

In both these cases, the semantic situation is the same as in (113): there is a referent1 - ‘life’ in (114), God in (115) - of whom it is aserted that they are containers and that they are filled to 100% with referent2, i.e. the referent on the X-bond of kull₄ - ‘problems’ in (114), ‘love’ in (115). There is a major distinction here: (114) and (115) feature a pronoun co-referential with referent1. Such structures are interpreted as copular clauses with the pronoun in the role of a copula (Lucas and Čéplö 2020: 286, Vanhove 2025a: 795-801). If one accepts this interpretation, then an alternative analysis of examples like (116) offers itself: kull₄ does not act like a verb; rather, it is a copular predicate in a copular clause with no copula (Lucas and Čéplö 2020: 286, Vanhove 2025a: 788-794).

There are two issues with this proposition: firstly, what to do with examples like (113)? In copular clauses with the subject in the first or second person singular or plural, pronominal copula is not used. In such notorious cases as (117), the first aħna ‘we’ is the subject, the second is the predicate.

Moreover, in negative utterancers such as (118) (adapted from Fabri 1993: 200 with my glossing and translation), it is impossible to determine whether we are looking at negated pronominal copula or negated koll₄: both will look the same.

Unable to answer the first question, we proceed to the second one: Vanhove (2025a: 788-794) differentiates between nominal, adjectival and adverbial predication. Assuming structures like (114) and (115) are indeed instances of copular predication, what type of copular predicate is kull₄? This question is not only relevant for the purpose of determining if kull₄ is a predicate in the sense of DH.1-4 above, but also for the ultimate goal of this paper, i.e. determining whether those lexemes previously described as pseudo-verbs actually do form a coherent word class. And to answer it, consider (119).

The general syntactic structure of utterance is clear: the subject is Tommy, the verbal predicate is qal ‘he said’. To be minimally saturated, qal also requires its X-bond to be saturated; in this case, this is what the single-word utterance Tajjeb does. What then is the syntactic and semantic role of kollu urġenza? Its structure is also straightforward: kollu is an instance of kull₄ while urġenza is attached on its X-bond; its meaning would therefore be ‘full of urgency’. And since its S-bond can only be saturated by Tommy, this indicates that kollu urġenza provides additional information about the (psychological) state of Tommy at the time of the events denoted by qal. Traditional analysis would describe qal with its dependents as the main clause, but what of kollu urġenza? In traditional analysis, additional information about a state can be expressed in three ways: adverb, adverbial clause, adjective (relative) clause, and a structure known at least since Schultze-Berndt and Himmelmann (2004) as a depictive secondary predicate or simply depictive.

To run down the options, we can confidently assert that kull₄ cannot be classified as an adverb, just by its valency frame alone that consists of nominals only. Secondly, in Maltese, an adverbial clause is typically introduced by a conjunction (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 38); this is not the case here. And as for adjective clauses, if Maltese verbs (and putative pseudo-verbs) are to function as modifiers to nouns, they form adjective (or relative) clauses using one of three ways - the subordinator li, an interrogative pronoun or what Camilleri refers to as “zero strategy” (Camilleri 2023: 50). If one assumes that kull₄ is a pseudo-verb and thus generally behaves as a verb, one could interpret the use of kollu in (119) as a zero strategy adjective clause. However, this seems exceedingly unlikely: for one, the type of zero-strategy adjective clause in (119) is almost exclusively used with indefinite nominals to form restrictive relative clauses (Camilleri 2023: 50, 58); the nominal modified by kollu in (119) is a proper noun and thus unlikely to be indefinite. And finally, in Maltese, it is not possible to form a restrictive relative clause with proper nouns, unless the proper noun is introduced by a definite article (Camilleri 2023: 44); this not the case here.

It would therefore appear that of the four options for indicating a state only one option remains. As it happens, the semantic role of kollu urġenza in (119) corresponds near perfectly to the standard definition of a depictive (van der Auwera and Malchukov 2005: 393): kollu asserts something about the referent that is the subject of qal (referred to as the main clause in discussions on depictives), but kollu is not a part of the valency frame of qal (i.e. the main clause); the state of affairs expressed by kollu overlaps temporarily with the events denoted by the main clause.

Secondary depictives are not unknown in the literature on Maltese: while Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander do not use the term, the phenomenon is precisely what they refer to when they speak of “adjectivalized noun classes”. They illustrate this by (120) (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 34-5; my glossing) where riekeb is the depictive.

Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander note that depictives can be formed “for a subclass of verbs … by through the use of participles” (Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997: 34). This is consistent with cross-linguistic surveys: while adjectives are the most “widely recognized instances” (Himmelmann and Schulze-Berndt 2005: 57), these include “not only plain adjectives, but also verby and nouny adjectives, adjectives in serial constructions, participles, and relative clauses” (van der Auwera and Malchukov 2005: 394).

In Maltese, only participles and kull₃ (Stolz 2009: 164) have been described to form depictives. That adjectives can do the same is illustrated by (121).⁴⁷

This list is of course not exhaustive, as a detailed investigation of depictives in Maltese is still a desideratum. Two points can be made here regardless: first, kull₄ can be added to the list. Secondly, as noted above, kollu urġenza in (119) cannot be described as a relative clause and kull₄ is certainly not a participle. Assuming the structure in (119) really is a depictive and considering the role of kull₄ as a copular predicate in copular clauses with pronominal copulas (114) and (115), I offer the following hypothesis: kull₄ is an adjective-like modifier that modifies nominals, rather than a verb-like word that forms verb-like predicates. This accounts for the observed facts much better than trying to force kull₄ into the Procrustes’s bed of a verb.

This, however, is not full story of kull₄. First, if it is indeed an adjective-like modifer, its syntactic properties must be studied further. Secondly and more importantly, there are instances of kull₄ which do not correspond to the description above. Consider (122) where the container-contained relationship does not capture the semantic goings on.

These questions must be left for the future. For now, I conclude this section repeating the observation that kull₄ does not participate in predication in a way similar to verbs.

7.3.9 moħħ₂

Camilleri describes the meaning of this putative pseudo-verb as ‘be attentive/be thinking (in a concerned manner) about s.th’ (Camilleri 2016: 127), Spagnol gives ‘worry, be mentally focused on’ as the gloss (Spagnol 2009: 67); my understanding is closer to Spagnol’s. Much of what has been said about ħsieb₂ in section 7.3.7 applies here as well, starting with how Camilleri describes it: Camilleri notes that moħħ₂ can take both direct and possessive suffixed pronouns. She then gives three examples, all with 1sg suffixed pronoun on the S-bond and a nominal on the X-bond introduced by the preposition fi. To show the wider use of moħħ₂, I give (123) with the putative pseudo-verb in 3sgm.

Much like with ħsieb₂, the most typical ways to saturate the X-bond on moħħ₂ is a nominal introduced by fi and other predicates introduced by li (124) and biex (124). Note that in the latter example, the suffixed pronoun is from the direct object set.

Here is, however, where moħħ₂ breaks the mould. First, consider (126) where the nominal on the X-bond of moħħ₂ is introduced by the preposition fuq.

This one again raises the question of whether such structures could simply be interpreted as copular predicates with the noun moħħ as the subject, especially in light of the fact that there exist examples, albeit only one or two each, where the X-bond on moħħ₂ is saturated with verbal predicates, adverbials, nominals introduced by other prepositions such as dwar, headless relative clauses (127) or conjunctions such as jekk.

The question is then immediately answered by the same example: as with ħsieb₂, moħħ₂ is negated by the pronominal copula. If (126) were a copular clause, the negation would follow moħħi. It does not, instead, it precedes it as is the case with other putative pseudo-verbs negated this way.

Secondly, there are examples like (128), where the X-bond is saturated by another fully saturated predicate, i.e. what I referred to in the context of donn and qis as a full clause.

To be sure, such instances are rare, but it is significant that while such structures are possible with moħħ₂, they do not seem possible with ħsieb₂. Also note the translation: it would seem that in these structures, there is a slight semantic shift for moħħ₂ from ‘to focus on’ to ‘to worry about’. This and the list of rare ways to saturate the X-bond on moħħ₂ raises interesting questions about the syntax and semantics of moħħ₂ that must, sadly, be left for future work.

For now, suffice it so say that much like ħsieb₂, moħħ₂ is in some aspects verb-like in its semantics and its syntax. Instances where it is not, such as (128), deserve further attention. For the purposes of this paper - and thus provisionally - I will classify moħħ₂ as a pseudo-verb, gloss it as ‘to focus on, to worry about’, and conclude with an observation on its agreement with kien: in the 96 cases of moħħ₂ in BCv3, the auxiliary kien agrees in 30% of cases.

7.3.10 nofs₂

Camilleri introduced nofs₂ as a pseudo-verb (Camilleri 2016: 118) and gives a solitary example without further comment (Camilleri 2016: 119). To remedy that, I start by observing that as noted in section 7.3.8) above, nofs₂ is - like kull₄ - derived from a fractional quantifier; consequently, what applies to kull₄ should also apply to nofs₂. This is indeed the case. Consider (129) and (130) which illustrate the use of nofs₂.

Both these examples together illustrate the typical usage of nofs₂: their S-bonds are saturated by a nominal (in (129) modified by an adjective), while the X-bond is saturated by a participle/adjective⁴⁸ (129) or a prepositional phrase (130) (or, much more rarely, bare nouns). The only major difference between nofs₂ and kull₄ is in the word classes that can saturate their respective X-bonds; this is probably due to their respective semantics. In all the other ways, nofs₂ and kull₄ behave identically. It is therefore not surprising that nofs₂ in (130) is used as a depictive much the same way kull₄ is in (119). And it should also come as no surprise that the utterance in (129) - which is a popular saying - is also attested in a form with a pronominal copula.

In conclusion, nofs₂ is, much like kull₄, a an adjective-like modifier and does not participate in predication the same way verbs do.

7.3.11 wieħed₂

wieħed₂ meaning ‘alone’ is one of the putative pseudo-verbs that have been discussed only minimally. Fabri 1993 and Camilleri 2016 merely list it, but do not give a single glossed example. Peterson lists it on his master list and even gives one example (Peterson 2009: 187), but does not analyze it any further.

To begin our analysis, consider (132) as a typical example of the use of wieħed₂.

The first thing to notice here is that the utterance in (132) consists of the verb miet ‘to die’ which is fully saturated by the proper noun on its S-bond. In other words, miet is the predicate here and the instance of wieħed₂ conveys further information about the state of affairs at the time of the event described by the predicate. In my previous analysis (Čéplö 2024), I described this use as adverbial, considering that in the vast majority of cases, wieħed₂ modifies a verbal predicate in exactly the same way as it does in (132). An observant reader, however, will have immediately noticed the semantic parallels between wieħed₂ and kull₂ or nofs₂. And indeed, upon closer look, those parallels become much clearer. Like the other two, wieħed₂ behaves like an adjective-like modifier: first, it can modify nominals like the proper noun in (133), invariably appearing right after the nominal.

Secondly, wieħed₂ can be used to form depictives as in (134). Note the agreement: the subject and the verb is 1SG; the depictive waħdu is 3SGM and agrees with the (prepositional) object of the verb.

Unlike with kull₂ or nofs₂, wieħed₂ does not appear as a copular predicate with pronominal copula and so structures like (135) are ambiguous as to their syntactic analysis: they can either be instances of copular clauses with adjectival predicates (for adjectival predication, see Vanhove 2025a: 791-792) or instances of wieħed₂ as a predicate. The totality of the evidence points to the former, I will therefore classify wieħed₂ as an adjective-like modifier not syntactically equivalent or even similar to verbs.

7.3.12 qis

And finally, we turn to qis, traditionally described as meaning ‘like’ (Peterson 2009: 188) or ‘appear/as though/if’ (Camilleri 2016: 118). This is one of those pseudo-verbs where Peterson (2009) does not give a single example; Camilleri (2019), on the other hand, discusses it extensively, albeit mostly in heavy LFG terms.

For the general description of qis, suffice it to say that it takes the direct object set; (136) and (137) then illustrate two fully saturated instances of qis.

An astute reader will have immediately noticed the parallels to donn and indeed, the properties of qis are nearly identical: its S-bond is saturated by a nominal (minimally by the suffixed pronoun) while the X-bond is saturated by any predicate, in our cases copular (136) and verbal (137), but existentials are possible as well (138).

The function and thus the semantics of qis are also identical to those of donn: the actual semantic content of the utterance lies in the predicate on the X-bond while qis merely adds TAM value to it, specifically converting the mood to irrealis. qis can thus, just like donn, be described as a TAM auxiliary.

The parallels between qis and donn do not end there: much like with donn, qis can take a fully saturated verbal predicate (a full clause) on the X-bond, whether directly (139) or introduced by the subordinator li (139).

Note that the lack of agreement between qis and the verbal predicate on its X-bond in (140); this shows that like donn (and il and kien), qis can also function as a cleft device. This once again underscores the nature of qis as an auxiliary verb that fulfills some roles of kien. The question of whether there are other ways in which qis is like kien and if there is perhaps more that they have in common will be left for future work.

For now, I will turn to the differences between between donn and qis, specifically one conspicuous one. Consider example (141).

First, note that the X-bond on qis is saturated by a noun; here I describe these structures as copular predicates saturating the X-bond on qis. About 25% of instances of qis in BCv3 are saturated in this way; in comparison, this is true of only 4% of instances of donn. This would thus appear to be the typical and most conspicuous use of qis.

Secondly, note the structure of the utterance: we have a verbal predicate timxi and then the predicate qis with its X-bond dependent. Semantically, their relationship is clearly that of head and dependant, i.e. qis describes the state or condition in which the event denoted by timsi is taking place. An observant reader will have noticed that this very much resembles what has been said about kull₄ in section 7.3.8, specifically its role as a depictive in (119). What applies to kull₄ there applies to qis here: qishom dgħajsa is not an adverb, nor an adverbial, nor an adjective (relative) clause, it would therefore seem to function as a depictive here. This raises many further questions: not about the status of qis as a predicate (in the sense used in this paper) - unlike with kull₄, qis also participates in structures where it is undoubtedly the predicate. Rather, this raises the questions about the various types of structure qis can participate in, about how depictives are realized in Maltese and about Maltese word classes in general. There is, sadly, little space for this discussion here.

I will conclude this description with a few words on negation and agreement with the auxiliary kien: as for negation, qis is negated using pronominal negation and decidedly prefers the 3sgm form; only 4% (8 instances total) of instances of qis in BCv3 agree with pronominal negation. Interestingly, the situation with the auxiliary kien is the reverse: of the 496 instances of qishom in BCv3 directly modified by kien, 97% agree with kien.

7.4 Type 3 pseudo-verbs (neg only)

7.4.1 għad₃

As note above in section 6.3.2, għad₃ has not been sufficiently discussed as a lexeme of its own. Camilleri (2016: 91, 173) described it as a particle and a cognate to għad₂; elsewhere, she refers to it as “invariable għad” (Camilleri 2016: 182). In a brief section dedicated to għad₃ (Camilleri 2016: 183-184), Camilleri describes its semantics as “‘still, yet’ and never ‘just’”; she does not mention anything about its ability to take standard negation, only describes some aspects of its syntax in contrast to għad₂.

To begin with the semantics of għad₃ (DH.2), I will reiterate that għad₃ is related in meaning to għad₂ (142) and thus also expresses phasal polarity. Much like its cognate, għad₃ covers both the still quadrant of the standard model of PhP expressions (see section 7.2.2), as well as the not yet quadrant (143).

As for its valency frame (DH.1), għad₃ only requires one bond to be saturated. Camilleri observes that “[invariable] għad can appear in contexts where no form of the pseudo-verb can appear. The invariable particle, but not the inflecting pseudo-verb għad₂ can be used in the presence of an existential” (Camilleri 2016: 183). This is not entirely true, as examples like (142) show. To be sure, the reading of the hemm₂ in (142) is presentational rather than existential, but that does not change the fact that għad₂ can and does appear with existentials.

Camilleri is, however, onto something here. As I noted above in section 6.3.2), it appears that għad₃ is typically used with existentials and experiential verbs. This is borne out by corpus data: there are 41788 instances of the phonetic/graphic sequence għad (this includes instances with the negative suffix -x) which can be grouped into 1324 groups based on the immediately following token. The first 100 groups account for 92% (38722) of all instances of the phonetic/graphic sequence għad; of these, 22921 are instances of għad₃ where the dependent follows the lexeme directly. Table 9 below summarizes the types of dependents għad₃ can take.

This confirms the observation above regarding the use of għad₃: it largely favors existentials, għand₂ and experiential verbs like baqa’ ‘to remain’ and fadal ‘to be left over’ (Haspelmath and Caruana 2000, Čéplö 2024). Interestingly, the last category also includes jonqos ‘to be missing’ not previously mentioned in this context (144). The use of għad₃ in (144) (specifically the lack of agreement with the feminine ċans) adds to the evidence that the form of jonqos is not actually an instance of 3sgm.ipfv with all that it implies in terms of TAM and that the j- prefix is merely vestigial.

Instances of għad₃ followed by li also deserve to be remarked upon. Firstly, some 13% of them are typos (instances of hyphenated jingħad ‘it is said’, i.e. jin- għad). Secondly and more importantly, the instances of għad li are not directly related to għad₃; rather, they are a multiword expression meaning ‘although, even though’ (145).

The previous discussion of the valency frame of għad₃ does not include instances where għad₃ is followed by a negator (either a form of ma or pronominal negation), i.e. it covers the not yet quadrant of the standard model of PhP. In such instances, the range of lexemes that can saturate its bond is much wider. The most frequent ones still are existentials and għand₂ (143), but verbal predicates and copular predicates (146) can appear here as well.

As noted in section 7.2.2, għad₃ can take standard negation (147).

When modified by kien, as in (148), however, it is the auxiliary that receives the negation (cf. Lucas 2023: 158). In that way, although għad₃ can take negation, it behaves like any other member of the verbal chain. As with negated għad₂, negated għad₃ also covers the no longer quandrant of PhP expressions.

Recall that in section 7.2.2), the function of għad₂ was described as an auxiliary (verb). If għad₃ covers the same semantic space, the same should be said of it, especially if it otherwise behaves like any other verb would. However, the only morphological verb-like thing about għad₃ is its ability to take negation. This, while remarkable, is not sufficient to classify it as pseudo-verb, I will therefore exclude it from consideration for a status of pseudo-verb and return to it later.

7.4.2 hemm₂ and hawn₂

Much has already been written, most recently by Vanhove (2025a), about these two existential predicates. Suffice it to say here that in the terms used here, they have a single bond to be satured (DH.1), in some analyses referred to as the pivot (McNally 2011: 1833). This bond is saturated by a nominal, which includes a headless relative clause (149).

The semantics of both existentials are also straightforward, i.e. both express the existence or presence of the pivot (DH.2). Whether the semantic and syntactic properties of the pivot are similar to that of the S or A argument (DH.3) is a question that is much debated (see Haspelmath 2025: 5 for a brief overview). This is a question not to be answered here. Suffice it to say that for our purposes (DH.4), existentials do not show person marking the same way that other putative pseudo-verbs do. This alone distinguishes them from verbs and other pseudo-verbs. As a result, they should not be included in either of these categories.

7.4.3 tant

As noted in section 6.3.3 above, the lexeme tant is capable of taking standard negation as in (150) and (151). This morphological property is the only reason pseudo-verb hemm₂ is included on the list and since it applies to tant, so should tant.

In this section, I examine the properties of tant to determine whether it serves as a predicate, starting with it semantics (DH.2). The base form - i.e. tant - is described by Aquilina as both a masculine noun and an adverb meaning “certain quantity” (Aquilina 1987: 1394). The adverbial use - specifically modifying an adverb with regard to manner - is also described by Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander (1997: 44) and is well attested in corpora (152).