Maltese, the national language of the island of Malta, is the only Semitic language of Europe, spoken by almost 400,000 people. Focusing primarily on Standard Maltese, the authors clarify many areas which, until now, remained undefined, especially syntax and intonation. English loanwords continue to find their way into Standard Maltese as the influence of English becomes increasingly important.

This book describes the syntactic, morphological and phonological structure of Maltese as one integrated linguistic system composed of many strands (Arabic, Romance and English) and complies with the Descriptive Grammars series profile. Consequently, Maltese will be appreciated not simply by the typologist, but also by the Arabist and the scholar of Romance.