Folia Linguistica 47/2 (2013), 323–343. doi 10.1515/flin.2013.013 issn 0165–4004, e-issn 1614–7308 © Mouton de Gruyter – Societas Linguistica Europaea Syncretism and its efects within Maltese nominal paradigms Maris Camilleri & Phyllisienne Gauci University of Surrey/University of Malta Tis article discusses the morphologically complex phenomenon of syncretism in its relation to stem patterns, overabundance and overdiferentiation, by describ- ing and analyzing past and ongoing changes in Maltese nominal paradigms. Path- ways of diachronic change leading to nominal paradigms in Present-day Maltese are put forward. It will be shown that the canonical/non-canonical paradigmatic classifcation cannot be simply reduced to a binary parameter. Rather, canon- ical or non-canonical behaviour can refer to the stem form, word form, afxes or other potential units in a given infectional paradigm, separately. On such an account, the same paradigm may have diferent facets, and can be canonical on one parameter but non-canonical on others. A parallel claim will be made for overdiferentiated vs. non-overdiferentiated sets of lexemes. Such lexemes cannot be exclusively considered as belonging to the overdiferentiated or non-overdifer- entiated set. As will be shown from the body-parts set of data in Maltese, a lexeme may have split membership, and may belong within both an overdiferentiated and a non-overdiferentiated class of lexemes depending on the infectional para- digm employed. Keywords: Syncretism, non-canonicity, Maltese, dual, overdiferentiation 1. Introduction Tis article describes two cases of syncretism and its efects within nominal paradigms in Semitic Maltese. Te working defnition of syncretism here is “a failure to make a morphosyntactically relevant distinction” (Baerman, Brown & Corbett 2005: 2). Our specifc notion of syncretism focuses on uninfectedness, that is, the situation where a feature is syntactically relevant Brought to you by | Rice University Authenticated Download Date | 6/5/15 5:13 PM