29.1366, Books: The languages of Malta: Paggio, Gatt (eds.)

Wed Mar 28 16:09:36 UTC 2018

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-1366. Wed Mar 28 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.1366, Books: The languages of Malta: Paggio, Gatt (eds.)

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté,
                                   Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Michael Czerniakowski <mike at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2018 12:09:31
From: Sebastian Nordhoff [Sebastian.Nordhoff at langsci-press.org]
Subject: The languages of Malta: Paggio, Gatt (eds.)

Title: The languages of Malta 
Series Title: Studies in Diversity Linguistics  

Publication Year: 2018 
Publisher: Language Science Press
	   http://langsci-press.org

Book URL: http://langsci-press.org//catalog/book/182 

Editor: Patrizia Paggio
Editor: Albert Gatt

Electronic: ISBN:  9783961100705 Pages: 317 Price: Europe EURO 0 Comment: Open Access

Abstract:

The purpose of this volume is to present a snapshot of the state of the art of
research on the languages of the Maltese islands, which include spoken
Maltese, Maltese English and Maltese Sign Language.

Malta is a tiny, but densely populated country, with over 422,000 inhabitants
spread over only 316 square kilometers. It is a bilingual country, with
Maltese and English enjoying the status of official languages. Maltese is a
descendant of Arabic, but due to the history of the island, it has borrowed
extensively from Sicilian, Italian and English. Furthermore, local dialects
still coexist alongside the official standard language. The status of English
as a second language dates back to British colonial rule, and just as in other
former British colonies, a characteristic Maltese variety of English has
developed. To these languages must be added Maltese Sign Language, which is
the language of the Maltese Deaf community. This was recently recognised as
Malta’s third official language by an act of Parliament in 2016.

While a volume such as the present one can hardly do justice to all aspects of
a diverse and complex linguistic situation, even in a small community like
that of Malta, our aim in editing this book was to shed light on the main
strands of research being undertaken in the Maltese linguistic context.

Six of the contributions in this book focus on Maltese and explore a broad
range of topics including: historical changes in the Maltese sound system;
syllabification strategies; the interaction of prosody and gesture; the
constraints regulating /t/-insertion; the productivity of derivational
suffixes; and raising phenomena. The study of Maltese English, especially with
the purpose of establishing the defining characteristics of this variety of
English, is a relatively new area of research. Three of the papers in this
volume deal with Maltese English, which is explored from the different
perspectives of rhythm, the syntax of nominal phrases, and lexical choice. The
last contribution discusses the way in which Maltese Sign Language (LSM) has
evolved alongside developments in LSM research.

In summary, we believe the present volume has the potential to present a
unique snapshot of a complex linguistic situation in a geographically
restricted area. Given the nature and range of topics proposed, the volume
will likely be of interest to researchers in both theoretical and comparative
linguistics, as well as those working with experimental and corpus-based
methodologies. Our hope is that the studies presented here will also serve to
pave the way for further research on the languages of Malta, encouraging
researchers to also take new directions, including the exploration of
variation and sociolinguistic factors which, while often raised as explanatory
constructs in the papers presented here, remain under-researched.

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Historical Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)
                     Maltese (mlt)
                     Maltese Sign Language (mdl)

Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=125894

PUBLISHING PARTNER

    Cambridge University Press
        http://us.cambridge.org

MAJOR SUPPORTING PUBLISHERS

    Akademie Verlag GmbH
        http://www.oldenbourg-verlag.de/akademie-verlag

    Bloomsbury Linguistics (formerly Continuum Linguistics)
        http://www.bloomsbury.com

    Brill
        http://www.brill.nl

    Cambridge Scholars Publishing
        http://www.c-s-p.org

    Cascadilla Press
        http://www.cascadilla.com/

    Classiques Garnier
        http://www.classiques-garnier.com/

    De Gruyter Mouton
        http://www.degruyter.com/

    Edinburgh University Press
        http://www.euppublishing.com

    Elsevier Ltd
        http://www.elsevier.com/

    Equinox Publishing Ltd
        http://www.equinoxpub.com/

    European Language Resources Association (ELRA)
        http://www.elra.info/

    Georgetown University Press
        http://www.press.georgetown.edu/

    John Benjamins
        http://www.benjamins.com/

    Lincom GmbH
        http://www.lincom-shop.eu/

    MIT Press
        http://mitpress.mit.edu/

    Multilingual Matters
        http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

    Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG
        http://www.narr.de/

    Oxford University Press
        oup.com/us

    Palgrave Macmillan
        http://www.palgrave.com/

    Peter Lang AG
        http://www.peterlang.com/

    Rodopi
        http://www.rodopi.nl/

    Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
        http://www.routledge.com/

    Springer
        http://www.springer.com/

    University of Toronto Press
        http://www.utpjournals.com/

    Wiley-Blackwell
        http://www.wiley.com/

OTHER SUPPORTING PUBLISHERS

    Association of Editors of the Journal of Portuguese Linguistics
        http://www.fl.ul.pt/revistas/JPL/JPLweb.htm

    International Pragmatics Assoc.
        http://ipra.ua.ac.be/

    Linguistic Association of Finland
        http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/

    Morgan & Claypool Publishers
        http://www.morganclaypool.com/

    Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT)
        http://www.lotpublications.nl/

    Seoul National University
        http://j-cs.org/index/index.php

    SIL International Publications
        http://www.sil.org/resources/publications

    Universitat Jaume I
        http://www.uji.es/CA/publ/

    University of Nebraska Press
        http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/

    Utrecht institute of Linguistics
        http://www-uilots.let.uu.nl/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-29-1366	
----------------------------------------------------------
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
          http://multitree.org/