The Dialect of Gharb (Gozo/Malta)

The Dialect of Gharb (Gozo/Malta) proposes a systematic description of the vernacular of the village of Gharb based on field research conducted in 2013-2022 and comparative material from the 1970's. This monography focuses on the Semitic matrix of the dialect with a synchronic and diachronic analysis of its structure on phonological, morphophonemic and morphological levels. An innovative theoretical framework introduces prosodic phonology and its alternative hierarchical language model as a means of integrating suprasegmental phenomena like pausal forms into the phonological and grammatical system of this language variety. Furthermore, the data from the village of Gharb are compared with other Arabic dialects, resulting in the finding that the Gharbian dialect exhibits linguistic phenomena - most prominently pausal diphthongization - that link it to geographically distant Syro-Palestinian dialects and an Aramaic substratum although it is known to belong to the North African Arabic dialect group.