The national language of the Island of Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea is spoken by almost 400,000 people. This text focuses on Standard Maltese and serves to clarify many areas which remain undefined, specifically in the areas of syntax and intonation. English loanwords continue to find their way into Standard Maltese, especially as Maltese inhabitants become increasingly bilingual, and their variations are studied, as well as their morphological behaviour. Complying with the Descriptive Grammars series profile, Albert Borg presents a linguistical analysis of Maltese which is intended to be of significance to linguists, for the purposes of both cross-language comparisons and the study of specific linguistic, such as language universals, language typology, comparative syntax, morphology and phonology.

Focusing primarily on Standard Maltese, the authors clarify many areas which, until now, remain undefined, with emphasis on syntax and intonation. English loanwords continue to find their way into Standard Maltese, especially as the Maltese inhabitants become increasingly bilingual, and the variations are studied, as well as their morphological behavior. The book describes the syntactic, morphological and phonological structure of Maltese as one integrated linguistic system composed of different strands (Arabic, Romance and English).

The contributions included in this collection present different perspectives on various aspects of Maltese Linguistics, thereby enriching a field which has been attracting considerably greater interest in recent years than was the case in the past. The papers focus on the Maltese language itself as well as on Maltese in relation to other languages. They provide a picture of Maltese mainly from a synchronic perspective, descriptions ranging from indepth analyses of morphological and syntactic features to contributions on the lexicon, corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics. A number of papers dealing with diachronic considerations are also included. The topics dealt with in this volume show not only that Maltese is the object of research from a variety of perspectives but also that scholars with diverse backgrounds and of different nationalities are studying this language, thus providing an enriching body of knowl-edge, including findings of interest to general linguistics and various other fields in the humanities. Der vorliegende Band enthalt Beitrage mit vielfaltigen Herangehensweisen zu unterschiedlichen Aspekten der maltesischen Sprachwissenschaft und erweitert dadurch den Blick auf eine Disziplin, die in den letzten Jahren deutlich mehr Interesse findet als das in der Vergangenheit der Fall war. Der Fokus wird in den einzelnen Beitragen sowohl auf die maltesische Sprache an sich als auch auf den Sprachkontakt von Maltesisch mit anderen Sprachen gerichtet. Neben synchronen Untersuchungen, die morphologische und syntaktische Eigenschaften sowie lexikalische, korpus- und soziolinguistische Aspekte von Maltesisch eingehend beleuchten, finden sich Analysen mit vorwiegend diachroner Blickrichtung. Die thematische Vielfalt des vorliegenden Bandes, die aus den unterschiedlichen He-rangehensweisen der beteiligten Wissenschaftler unterschiedlicher Nationalitat und mit unterschiedlichem Forschungshintergrund resultiert, erweitert nicht nur den Wissensbestand der maltesischen Linguistik, sondern kann auch bereichernde Erkenntnisse fur die Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft sowie fur andere Zweige der Geisteswissenschaften liefern."

In the run up to the general elections of 12th April 2003 and the EU referendum of the 8th March 2003 in Malta, much uncertainty existed in the country's main sectors, particularly the manufacturing ones, on the future of SMEs, which make up a large proportion of the country's business. This dissertation investigates, through primary research, whether Maltese SMEs can, and have, learnt anything from the Greek experience of EU membership.