The questionnaire presented here was designed to collect linguistic data in Gozitan dialects, which are classified as rural dialects of the Maltese language. It consists of three parts: lexical, phonological and morphological. Since a particular feature of the Gozitan dialects are pausal forms involving diphthongisation of etymologically long vowels ( *ī and *ū), attention is directed towards contextual as well as pausal data acquisition. In the morphological part, the issues concerning verbs are mainly expanded, while in the phonological part, those concerning the realisation of vowels. With minor modifications, the questionnaire can also be used to conduct field research on dialects of the island of Malta.

Etymologies demonstrate complexity of semantic changes that the Maltese words underwent as well as reflect the local history and lifestyle of peasants dwelling in rural areas of Malta and Gozo. In such way the words may be considered as a reservoir of the collective memory of Maltese people. Strikingly, the Maltese language, though Semitic in its grammar, semantically seems to be attached more to the Romance word. It is manifested not only in the preponderance of Sicilian words in Maltese dictionaries, but also in the transposition of some semantic structures mirroring the internal development of Romance languages. In the article the following Maltese terms were discussed: mgħażqa, zappun, minġel, xatba, rixtellu, minġla, ranċila, romblu tad-dris, midra, luħ, mannara, lexxuna.

Against the usual assumption that Arabic grammatical operators based on reflexes of šay derive from the Arabic word for ‘thing’ šayʔ, it is argued here that indefinite quantifiers and partitives instead derive from an existential particle šay that is present in some spoken Arabic dialects of the Arabian Gulf, Om an, and the Yemen. The ambiguity of the existential particle in constructions in which it sets off items in a series lends itself to its reanalysis as a quantifier, and its ambiguity as a quantifier motivates its reanalysis as a partitive. This is consistent with grammaticalization theory, whereby lexical forms give rise to grammatical forms, which themselves give rise to even more grammatical forms. Yet, existential šay likely did not arise from a lexical form. Instead, it is either a borrowing from Modern South Arabian or it is an inherited Semitic feature, ultimately deriving from an attention-focusing demonstrative. Either way, the grammaticalization of a quantitative šī/šē/šay cannot have proceeded directly from word ‘thing’. To the contrary, the word šayʔ meaning ‘thing’ can easily derive from an indefinite quantifier or partitive šay, in a process of degrammaticalization.