Incorporation (linguistics)

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Incorporation or Nominalinkorporation referred to in the linguistics a special Wortbildungsart , in which a noun with a verb is combined with the noun its syntactic loses independence. Incorporation is often, but not exclusively, found in North and South American polysynthetic languages. Despite the prominence in polysynthetic languages, not every polysynthetic language has to allow nominal incorporation.

There is also another, related meaning in generative syntax . There, the result of a head / head movement is called incorporation (see below).

properties

The following examples are from Tupinambá, an extinct language of Brazil . The sentence in example (1.) contains as a syntactic constituent a direct object s-oβá "his face" to a verb "wash": 

 (1.) s-oβá           a-jos-éj
      sein Gesicht    1SG-3SG-wusch
      „Ich wusch sein Gesicht“

This is not the case in example (2.): The verb éj, "wash" has incorporated the nominal stem oβá "face": 

  (2.) a-s-oβá-éj
       1SG-3SG-Gesicht-wusch
       „Ich wusch sein Gesicht“

The incorporation of direct objects (which therefore fill the semantic role of the patient ), as here, is the most widespread. However, other elements that occupy semantic roles, such as instruments and a. appear as an incorporation. In some languages ​​(such as Tupínamba and languages ​​of the Iroquois family ) incorporated elements have the same phonological form as their free counterparts, in other languages ​​there are special, often phonologically reduced variants for the incorporate.

The denotation of the two expressions above is identical. The difference is of a pragmatic nature: Example (1.) focuses attention on the fact that a face (and nothing else) has been washed, while the example involving incorporation (2.) focuses more on the overall activity. A method that is questionable from a scientific point of view, but which helps to convey a feeling for the phenomenon, is to recreate such constructions with the means of one's own language: "I face-washed him."

Genericity vs. Referentiality

In connection with the above-mentioned fact that the example having the incorporation ( 2. ) focuses on the overall plot, it is often assumed in the linguistic literature that the incorporated elements are not used referentially , i.e. This means that they do not refer to a specific object that is to be designated, but rather function generically , i.e. rather designate classes or types of objects in contrast to specific individual objects.

Related phenomena in European languages

In English there are cases that look like incorporation, for example the verb babysit. Such expressions, however, are of a different kind than the syntactic incorporation in polysynthetic languages: this example is rather formed by regression from the noun babysitter . There are also some similar cases in German , for example cycling, vacuum cleaning, adultery or household chores .

Relation to idiomatization

Sometimes incorporation leads to the development of fixed idiomatic expressions that merge into the lexicon of the language (such as the German verbs mentioned above). However, this is not to be associated with the phenomenon of incorporation as such . In the above example ( 2. ), the incorporation “face” could be replaced by any other noun that semantically matches the verb.

Incorporation in syntax theory

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In minimalist syntax, the term incorporation denotes a movement operation in which the head of a phrase is moved to the head of a higher-order phrase. For example, it is assumed that the head of the verb phrase ( VP) after the concatenation (merge) of the VPwith the functional category vto the head of the vPmoves (move). Syntactically, vand form Vthe head of the vP, morphologically, Vas a verb stem, vas an inflection ending (e.g. as a 3rd person singular marker / -s / in English in the corresponding contexts). The -head is said to be incorporatedV into the v-head .

swell

  1. ↑ Quoted from Bauer (1988: 44)
  2. ^ Noam Chomsky: The Minimalist Program. Current Studies in Linguistics, Volume 28. MIT Press, Cambridge, London, 1995. ISBN 0-262-53128-3 , ISBN 0-262-03229-5
  3. ^ David Adger : Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2003. ISBN 0199243700 .

literature

  • Laurie Bauer: Introducing Linguistic Morphology. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1988.
  • Nicholas Evans , Hans-Jürgen Sasse (Ed.): Problems of Polysynthesis. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2002.
  • Martin Haspelmath : Understanding Morphology. Arnold, London 2002.
  • Marianne Mithun: The evolution of noun incorporation. In: Language. 1984, 60 (4), pp-847-895.
  • Edward Sapir : The problem of noun incorporation in American languages. In: American Anthropologist. 1911, 13 (2), pp. 250-282.