Towards a diachrony of Maltese basic colour terms

The vernacular of the Maltese archipelago displays a twelve-term colour paradigm comprising <abjad> "white", <iswed> "black", <ahmar> "red", <ahdar> "green", <isfar> "yellow", <celesti> "sky blue", <blu> "dark blue", <kannella> "brown", <roza> "pink", <griz> "grey", <orangjo> "orange" and <vjola> "violet". The dual systemic split of the blue category is a striking feature of Maltese, inviting comparison with the situation obtaining in Italian and other Mediterranean languages. The hybrid (basically Arabic/Italian) composition of the Maltese colour system presents the linguistic researcher with an intriguing cultural synthesis reached by an erstwhile medieval vernacular of Arabic spoken by a small island community exposed to complex linguistic and cultural currents endemic in its regional and local history. The case of Maltese - a Europeanized Arabic vernacular - highlights the crucial role of external influences on cognitive processes monitoring the acquisition of colour categories, and evokes the need for a linguistic model incorporating an elaborate cultural dimension restricting universalist claims commonly associated with the Berlin and Kay paradigm.