Incorporation (linguistics)
The inclusion of a noun qualifies the verb, narrowing its scope rather than making reference to a specific entity.
Incorporation is central to many polysynthetic languages such as those found in North America, Siberia and northern Australia.
Incorporation and plain compounding may be fuzzy categories: consider backstabbing, name-calling, axe murder.
[1] waʼ-FACT-ke-1.SG-nakt-bed-a-EPEN-hninu-buy-':PUNCwaʼ- ke- nakt- a- hninu- ':FACT- 1.SG- bed- EPEN- buy- PUNC'I bought a bed.
"Chukchi, a Chukotko-Kamchatkan language spoken in North Eastern Siberia, provides a wealth of examples of noun incorporation.
The phrase təpelarkən qoraŋə means "I'm leaving the reindeer" and has two words (the verb in the first person singular, and the noun).
Mohawk, an Iroquoian language, makes heavy use of incorporation, as in: watia'tawi'tsherí:io "it is a good shirt", where the noun root atia'tawi "upper body garment" is present inside the verb.
Aspect markers (e.g. 了 le PERFECTIVE), classifier phrases (e.g. 三個鐘頭 sān ge zhōngtóu THREE + CL + hours), and other elements may separate the two constituents of these compounds, though different verb-object compounds vary in degree of separability.
As a result, most syntacticians have focused on generating definitions that apply to the languages they have studied, regardless of whether or not they are cross-linguistically attested.
When participating in noun incorporation, it allows for the speaker to represent an alternative expression to further explain and shift focus to the information being presented (Mithun 1984).
In 1985, Mithun introduced a four-type system to define the functionality and progression of noun incorporation in a language.
[3] A large field of inquiry addresses whether NI is a syntactic process (verb and noun originate in different nodes and come together through syntactic means), a lexical process (word-formation rules that apply in the lexicon dictate NI), or a combined process (entailing the investigation of which aspects of noun incorporation can be productively created through general syntactic rules and which must be specified in the lexicon).
[9] Within this section, we will focus on describing the influential syntactic and combined approaches to NI, though it is important to note that highly-influential lexical accounts, such as Rosen's (1989) paper,[10] do exist.
While this theory does not account for every language, it does provide a starting point for subsequent syntactic analyses of NI, both with and without head movement.
A more recent paper by Baker (2007) addresses a number of other influential accounts including Massam’s pseudo-incorporation,[12] Van Geenhoven’s base generation,[13] and Koopman and Szabolcsi’s small-phrase movement.
[14][15] It was concluded that while each have their strong points, they all fail to answer some important questions, thus requiring the continued use of Baker's head-movement account.
Each word can therefore express the meaning of a full clause or phrase; this structure has implications on how noun incorporation is manifested in the languages in which it is observed.
[9] This can be seen in the examples below, as the well-formed sentence in 2a involves the incorporation of na'tar (bread), the direct object of the transitive verb kwetar (cut).
Kikvthisa'shar-e'knife-NSFka-na'tar-a-kwetar-vsNsS-bread-∅-cut-HABKikv a'shar-e' ka-na'tar-a-kwetar-vsthis knife-NSF NsS-bread-∅-cut-HAB'This knife cuts bread'#Kikvthisw-a'shar-a-kwetar-vsNsS-knife-∅-cut-HABneNEka-na'tar-oNs-bread-NSF#Kikv w-a'shar-a-kwetar-vs ne ka-na'tar-othis NsS-knife-∅-cut-HAB NE Ns-bread-NSF'The bread cuts this knife'Further, a unique feature of Mohawk is that this language allows for noun incorporation into intransitives,[9] as illustrated in example sentence 3.
Hri' (shatter) is an intransitive verb into which the noun stem ks (dish) is being incorporated, producing a well-formed sentence.
Wa'-k-ather-a-hninu-'FACT-1sS-basket-∅-buy-PUNCthinkvthatWa'-k-ather-a-hninu-' thinkvFACT-1sS-basket-∅-buy-PUNC that'I bought that basket'According to Mithun's (1984)[3] theory of noun-incorporation classification, Mohawk is generally considered a type IV language because the incorporated noun modifies the internal argument.
Baker, Aranovich, & Golluscio claim that the structure of NI in Mohawk is the result of noun movement in the syntax.
The differences displayed by Mohawk as compared to other languages therefore depend on whether or not the person, number, and gender features are retained in the ‘trace’ of the noun, the trace being the position from where the noun moved from object position before adjoining to the governing verb.
[9] Figure 2 illustrates a simplified syntax tree of noun incorporation in Mohawk following Baker's head-movement hypothesis.
In Oneida (an Iroquoian language spoken in Southern Ontario and Wisconsin), one finds classifier noun incorporation, in which a generic noun acting as a direct object can be incorporated into a verb, but a more specific direct object is left in place.
dʒo-me-bo:b-dem-te-n-aismear-oil-head-REFL-NPST-INTR-1.SUBJdʒo-me-bo:b-dem-te-n-aismear-oil-head-REFL-NPST-INTR-1.SUBJ"I will anoint my head with oil"The extinct Sino-Tibetan language of Tangut (spoken in the Western Xia) has few attested cases of syntactic noun incorporation: gji²sonjij¹GENkjɨ¹-dzju²-phjo²-nja²DIR1-lord-cause-2SG.SUBJgji² jij¹ kjɨ¹-dzju²-phjo²-nja²son GEN DIR1-lord-cause-2SG.SUBJ'You made your son lord (of Zhongshan)'English noun incorporation differs from that of the polysynthetic languages described above.
[26] In English, it is more common for an argument or an actant to be incorporated into the predicate, which results in additional connotation or metaphoric meaning, e.g., to house-hunt.
(Theme) (Goal) The following illustrates the three sources of incorporation in English with corresponding examples: (action doers -er) (action indicator) nouns In the examples above, the incorporated actant possesses a separate syntactic position in the verb.
The linguistic typology of Hungarian is agglutinative, meaning that the language has words that may consist of a whole series of distinct morphemes.
Specifically, Korean obeys the Head Movement Constraint of Baker (1988) that was discussed in the prior section.
