This paper examines the productivity and form of the morphological diminutive in Maltese. Maltese has lexical items and grammatical properties stemming from both Semitic and Indo-European roots; previous research has shown that there are different levels of productivity for Semitic and Indo-European morphology, which varies even among speakers. In addition, both the Semitic and Indo-European morphological diminutive may take several different forms in Maltese. The goals of this research are to determine whether native speakers of Maltese can use a morphological diminutive (like wuggie) rather than a lexical diminutive (like little wug); if they can, whether a default form exists for the morphological diminutive, and if so, whether the default form is Indo-European or Semitic in nature. A novel word elicitation task was used to test how speakers use the diminutive, and the results may be explained using a variety of different theoretical frameworks allowing for a hierarchical selection of a diminutive allomorph.

中文翻译：

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马耳他形态小样的形式和生产率

本文研究了马耳他语中形态小写的生产力和形式。马耳他语具有源自闪米特语和印欧语系的词汇项和语法特性；先前的研究表明，闪族和印欧形态的生产力水平不同，甚至说话者之间也存在差异。此外，在马耳他语中，闪族人和印欧人的形态学小样可能采取几种不同的形式。这项研究的目的是确定母语为马耳他语的人是否可以使用形态上的小写词（如wuggie）而不是词汇上的小写词（如little wug）；如果可以，则是否存在形态学小写的默认形式，如果存在，则默认形式是本质上是印欧语系还是闪米特语。