Teaching & Learning Guide for: Noun Incorporation: Essentials and Extensions
Authors: Massam Diane 
Published: November 2009

This guide accompanies the following article: ‘Noun Incorporation: Essentials and Extensions’Language and Linguistics Compass 3 (2009): 1076–1096 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749‐818x.2009.00171.x

Author’s Introduction

Noun incorporation (NI) refers to a family of grammatical constructions that stand at the center of grammar, integrating morpho‐phonology and semantics, and crossing the lexical‐syntactic divide. It is thus an ideal topic of study, allowing extensions in all directions. In general, a NI structure is one in which a nominal that would canonically (either in the given language, or in languages in general) be expressed as an independent argument or adjunct is instead in some way incorporated into the verbal element of the sentence, forming part of the predicate. The construction raises many issues in empirical and theoretical grammar. At the heart of many of these issues is the question whether NI is a word formation rule or whether it interacts with syntax, manipulating sentential predicates. The study of NI thus raises questions as to whether there is a distinct word‐formation component. Empirically, languages exhibit myriad forms of NI, both morpho‐syntactically and semantically. In early work, morphology and syntax were the main areas of attention, in particular the role of polysynthesis and compounding in NI, but in recent years, the meanings of both the parts and the whole of incorporation complexes have taken center stage. In some languages, the predicate must denote a customary activity and the object is modificational, whereas in others, the process is fully productive and the incorporated nominal can be referential. Of further interest, there is a close relation between NI and other grammatical phenomena such as possessive, classificatory, complex predicate, and existential constructions, and through its study questions of nominal semantics, transitivity, discourse focus, and sentential aspect arise. The literature on NI is particularly discoursal, from its origins to the present day, which allows as well for close study of styles of linguistic analysis and argumentation. NI can thus be used as a springboard for discussion of many issues in current and historical linguistic theory.

Author Recommends (in chronological order)

Sapir, Edward. 1911. The problem of noun incorporation in American languages. American Anthropologist 13.250–82.

A famous early paper on the topic, addressing the issue of whether NI is a word‐forming or predicate forming construction, thus laying the groundwork for a century of work on the topic.

Mithun, Marianne. 1984. The evolution of noun incorporation. Language 60.847–95.

Perhaps the most important paper on the topic, as it presents a thorough overview of all the types of NI across a wide range of languages, suggesting an implicational hierarchy between the different types. The paper takes a lexicalist approach to NI.

Sadock, Jerrold M. 1986. Some notes on noun incorporation. Language 62.19–31.

A heated reply to Mithun (1984), taking issue with the view of NI as lexical, which he argues is based on the wrong approach of setting aside some types of NI.

Baker, Mark C. 1988. Incorporation: a theory of grammatical function changing (in particular, Chapter 3). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

A highly influential work on the topic within Government and Binding theory, presenting a structural blueprint for dealing with a wide range of NI phenomena.

Rosen, Sarah Thomas. 1989. Two types of noun incorporation: a lexical analysis. Language 65:2.294–317.

An alternative to Baker (1988), which argues that NI should be treated as lexical process, rather than a syntactic one, and which presents an analysis along these lines.

Baker, Mark C. 1996. The polysynthesis parameter (in particular, Chapter 7). New York: Oxford University Press.

A discussion of NI as found in polysynthetic languages, arguing that true NI is limited to such languages by a macro‐parameter.

Gerdts, Donna B. 1998. Incorporation. In A. Spencer and A. Zwicky (eds). The handbook of morphology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 84–100.

A useful overview of the NI literature up until 2001, with emphasis on the empirical range of phenomena.

Massam, Diane. 2001. Pseudo noun incorporation in Niuean. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 19.153–97.

An examination Niuean phrasal incorporation, opening the door to more abstract (or pseudo‐) incorporation.

Van Geenhoven, Veerle. 2001. Noun incorporation. State of the article. Glot International Vol. 5:8.261–71.

An overview of noun incorporation literature, with emphasis on semantic issues raised by the construction.

Farkas, Donka, and Henriëtte de Swart. 2003. The semantics of incorporation: from argument structure to discourse transparency. Centre for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.

An in‐depth analysis of semantics and pragmatic aspects of incorporation. The introduction gives a good overview of the issues addressed in the book.

Gerdts, Donna B. 2003. The morphosyntax of Halkomelem lexical suffixes. International Journal of American Linguistics 69.4.345–56.

An examination of one type of obligatory incorporation in which the nominal cannot stand alone.

Chung, Sandra, and William Ladusaw. 2004. Restriction and saturation. MIT Press.

A study in the semantics of noun incorporation, arguing for a new type of predicate‐argument relation, termed Restrict. (In particular, Chapter 3)

Dayal, Veneeta. 2007. Hindi pseudo incorporation. Ms. Rutgers University.
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/%7Edayal/Pincorp‐07.pdf

A study of the semantics of Hindi noun incorporation, with a focus on the role of number and aspect.

Johns, Alana. 2007. Restricting noun incorporation: root movement. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 25.535–76.

A new analysis of one type of obligatory incorporation, found in Inuktitut, in which the verbal element cannot stand alone.

Mathieu. Eric. 2009. Introduction to a special volume on noun incorporation and its kind. Lingua 119.141–7 (and papers therein).

This volume contains current papers on many aspects of NI, as well as an introduction to the key issues relevant today.

Sample Unit: Noun Incorporation and Related Issues

Noun Incorporation could be the key focus of a seminar course, or it could be used as a springboard to explore a variety of other topics. The following suggested curriculum focuses on noun incorporation, but also brings in some other topics, mainly through student projects, involving a presentation and a paper. As well as covering the topics related to the construction, the course can also serve as an introduction to analysis and argumentation, since several of the papers, from 1909 onwards, are overtly arguing against other authors listed for the course. The instructor can thus use the papers to dissect the techniques of linguistic argumentation. An option for weeks 3, 7, and 9 would be, instead of having all students read the key articles for the week, to allow them to read one from the set of related readings, which they can bring to the discussion. In this case, the instructor would present the key readings, and invite discussion of the main theme from the point of view of the readings the students have chosen.

Syllabus

1 Central perspectives

Week 1

This session introduces the range of types of NI, examining a broad set of data, as laid out in Mithun (1984). The instructor can foreshadow the coming topics of debate through close study of the data presented. The related reading, Gerdts (2001) provides an overview of the literature on NI up to 2001.

Key Reading:

Mithun, Marianne. 1984. The evolution of noun incorporation. Language 60.847–95.

Related Readings:

Gerdts, Donna B. 1998. Incorporation. In A. Spencer and A. Zwicky (eds). The handbook of morphology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 84–100.

Week 2

This session focuses on the leading structural analysis of noun incorporation, that of Baker (1988). The goal is to understand the motivation for the analysis, and its details, so as to be able to evaluate its effectiveness in accounting for the data, with reference to the material of Week 1. The instructor can foreshadow later views that head movement should not be part of the grammar, and raise the issues discussed in the related reading, Baker (2009), as to whether head movement is truly necessary to account for NI.

Key Reading:

Baker, Mark C. 1988. Incorporation: a theory of grammatical function changing (Chapter 3). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Related Readings:

Baker, Mark C. 2009. Is head movement still needed for noun incorporation? Lingua 119:148–65.

2 Reactions

Week 3

So far, a morphological and a syntactic analysis have been examined. This week, the focus is on reactions to these papers. The first paper, Rosen 1989, reacts against Baker’s syntactic approach and proposes a lexical approach instead. The second, Sadock (1986) reacts against Mithun’s lexical approach and argues for a syntactic approach instead. Related readings also argue for a lexical (Anderson 2001) or syntactic (Haugen 2007) approach, while Johns (2007) presents a syntactic view of Inuit incorporation which differs from Sadock’s (1986) view. The instructor can frame the discussion around both the issues and the styles of argumentation.

Key Readings:

Rosen, Sarah Thomas. 1989. Two types of noun incorporation: a lexical analysis. Language 65:2.294–317.

Sadock, Jerrold M. 1986. Some notes on noun incorporation. Language 62.19–31.

Related Readings:

Anderson, Stephen R. 2001. Lexicalism incorporation (or Incorporation lexicalized) Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Haugen, Jason D. 2008. Morphology at the interfaces – reduplication and noun incorporation in Uto‐Aztecan (Part III). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Johns, Alana. 2007. Restricting noun incorporation: root movement. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 25.535–76.

3 History

Week 4

Now that the students are informed about relatively current approaches to noun incorporation, it is interesting to go back to the very early papers on this topic and see how the same issues were debated in the early part of the 20th century. A meta‐topic here is the history of linguistic thinking.

Key Readings:

Kroeber, Alfred L. 1910. Noun incorporation in American languages. In F. Heger (Ed.), XVI Internationaler Amerikanisten‐Kongress (pp. 569–576). Vienna: Hartleben.

Sapir, Edward. 1911. The problem of noun incorporation in American languages. American Anthropologist 13.250–82.

Related Readings:

Kroeber, Alfred L. 1911. Incorporation as a linguistic process. American Anthropologist 13.577–84.

4 Expanding the domain

Weeks 5 and 6

These two weeks are devoted to student presentations. Each student will present a paper they have read, with critique and commentary, on an empirically or theoretically different aspect of noun incorporation. Examples include incorporation of subjects and adjuncts, possessive incorporation, obligatory NI, incorporation of other categories (PPs, Vs, etc.), or Lexical Functional Grammar approaches to NI. Depending on the session length and the number of students, the presentations might range from brief overviews of ten minutes each to longer presentations up to half an hour each.

5 NI and language type

The next two weeks will explore two fairly recent views of noun incorporation that study the phenomenon in two very diverse types of language. Baker (1996) argues that true noun incorporation occurs only in polysynthetic languages, where the incorporated noun is referential. Massam (2001) examines noun incorporation in an isolating language, in which the incorporated noun generally is non‐referential and modificational. A question arising is whether the two types of noun incorporation are completely separate, or related in some way, and if the latter, exactly how they can be related so as to capture both similarities and differences.

Week 7

This week’s reading looks at a polysynthetic language, in which the incorporated noun is referential. In related papers, Jelinek (1984) lays relevant groundwork for the understanding of polysynthetic languages, while Gerdts and Marlett (2008) look at obligatory incorporation of reduced nominals.

Key Reading:

Baker, Mark C. 1996. The polysynthesis parameter (Chapter 7). New York: Oxford University Press.

Related Readings:

Jelinek, Eloise: 1984. Empty categories, case and non‐configurationality. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2.39–76.

Gerdts, Donna B. and Stephen A. Marlett. 2008. Introduction: the form and function of denominal verb constructions. International Journal of American Linguistics 74:4.409–22.

Week 8

This week’s reading looks at an isolating language, in which the incorporated noun is non‐nonreferential. In a related paper, Massam (2009) examines a different type of NI in the same language, in which the incorporated nominal is referential.

Key Reading:

Massam, Diane. 2001. Pseudo noun incorporation in Niuean. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 19.153–97.

Related Reading:

Massam, Diane. 2009. Existential incorporation constructions. Lingua 119.166–84.

6 Semantics of NI

The next two weeks focus on recent literature on the semantics of NI, which is often non‐referential, modificational, and in some cases classificatory. Core debates are how to formalize the existential force of the nominal, whether narrow scope indefinites are incorporated, and whether incorporated nouns are number neutral. The role of pragmatics is also examined.

Week 9

This week explores the concept of semantic incorporation, which posits that incorporated nominals are not arguments, and that narrow scope indefinites are semantically incorporated, by reading the early work on this topic by Van Geenhoven (1988a). The related readings (Van Geenhoven 1998b, Chung and Ladusaw 2004, Farkas and de Swart 2003) discuss this and related issues further, while Van Geenhoven (2001) provides an overview of the semantics of NI.

Key Reading:

Van Geenhoven, Veerle. 1998a. On the argument structure of some noun incorporating verbs in West Greenlandic. In Miriam Butt and Wilhelm Geuder (eds). The projection of arguments: lexical and compositional factors. Stanford: CSLI Publications. 225–63.

Related Readings:

Chung, Sandra, and William Ladusaw. 2004. Restriction and saturation. MIT Press.

Farkas, Donka, and Henriëtte de Swart. 2003. The semantics of incorporation: from argument structure to discourse transparency. Centre for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University.

Van Geenhoven, Veerle. 1998b. Semantic incorporation and indefinite descriptions: semantic and syntactic aspects of noun incorporation in West Greenlandic. Dissertations in Linguistics. Stanford: CSLI Publications. (Introduction)

Van Geenhoven, Veerle. 2001. Noun incorporation: State of the article. Glot International Vol. 5:8.261–71.

Week 10

This week explores issues related to number and aspect in the semantics of NI. A related older paper (Hopper and Thompson, 1980) looks at the broader issue of degrees of transitivity.

Key Reading:

Dayal, Veneeta, 2007. Hindi pseudo incorporation. Ms. Rutgers University. http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/%7Edayal/Pincorp‐07.pdf

Related Reading:

Hopper, Paul and Sandra Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56.251–99.

7 Presentations of original work

Weeks 11 and 12

Students will present original research orally, based on their final papers. The paper can focus on NI or, particularly if a student wants to work on a language that does not exhibit NI, other topics can be explored, such as bare/reduced NPs, transitivity, modification, serial verbs, polysynthesis, locatives, existentials, possessors, or classification.

Focus Questions

Is noun incorporation a distinct grammatical phenomenon, or should it be folded into other constructions, such as compounding or polysynthesis?

Is the mental grammar divided into a Lexical and a Syntactic component?

What makes the difference between a language in which incorporated nouns are referential vs a language in which they are modificational?

What is the relation between NI and other types of incorporation of material into verbs, such as clitics, secondary predicates, modifiers, prepositions, etc.?

Is incorporation properly restricted to complements, and if so, how do we treat the apparent exceptions? If not, why are there overwhelmingly more cases of complement incorporation?

What are the limits of what we want to call noun incorporation? Are narrow scope indefinites incorporated?

What is at the heart of the connection between noun incorporation and possessors, classification, existential, complex predicate and locative constructions?

To what extent are constructions a legitimate object of study in theoretical syntax? Should they be defined semantically or morpho‐syntactically?