Incorporation (linguistics) Totally Explained

Everything about Incorporation Linguistics totally explained

Incorporation is a phenomenon by which a word, usually a verb, forms a kind of compound with, for instance, its direct object or adverbial modifier, while retaining its original syntactic function.
Incorporation is central to many polysynthetic languages such as those found in North America, Siberia and northern Australia, but polysynthesis doesn't necessarily imply incorporation. Neither does the presence of incorporation in a language imply that that language is polysynthetic.

Examples of incorporation

English

Though not regularly, English shows some instrument incorporation, as in breastfeed, and direct object incorporation, as in babysit. Etymologically, such verbs in English are usually back-formations: the verbs breastfeed and babysit are formed from the adjective breast-fed and the noun babysitter respectively. Incorporation and plain compounding may be fuzzy categories: consider backstabbing, name-calling, knife murder.

Oneida

The following example from Oneida (Iroquoian) illustrates noun incorporation.

waʔkhninú: ne kanaktaʔ
waʔ-	k-	hninu-	':	ne	ka-	nakt-	aʔ
FACT-	1.SG-	buy-	PUNC	ne	PREF-	bed-	SUF
'I bought a bed.'

In this example, the verbal root hninu appears with its usual verbal morphology: a factive marker (FACT), which very roughly translates as past tense, although this isn't quite accurate; an agreement marker (1.SG), which tells us that the verb agrees with 1st person singular (the speaker); and an aspect marker, punctual (PUNC), which tells us that this is a completed event. The direct object ne kanaktaʔ follows the verb. The function of the particle ne is unclear. Note that the word for bed consists of a root nakt plus a prefix and a suffix. The notion of the root is important here, but the properties of the prefix and suffix don't matter for this discussion.
The following sentence means the same as above, but noun incorporation has taken place.

waʔkenaktahninú:
waʔ-	ke-	nakt-	a-	hninu-	':
FACT-	1.SG-	bed-	EPEN-	buy-	PUNC
'I bought a bed.'

In this example, the root for bed nakt has incorporated into the verbal construction and appears before the verbal root. Two other incidental changes are noticed here. First, the agreement marker in the first example is k and in the second example is ke. These are two phonologically-conditioned allomorphs. In other words, the choice between using k and ke is based on the other sounds in the word (and has nothing to do with noun incorporation). Also, there's an epenthetic vowel a between the nominal and verbal roots. This vowel is inserted to break up an illegal consonant cluster (and also has nothing to do with noun incorporation).

Chukchi

Chukchi, a Paleosiberian language spoken in North Eastern Siberia, provides a wealth of examples of noun incorporation. The phrase təpelarkən qoranə means "I'm leaving the reindeer" and has two words (the verb in the first person singular, and the noun). The same idea can be expressed with the single word təqorapelarkən, in which the noun root qora "reindeer" is incorporated into the verb word.

Mohawk

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.

Cheyenne

Cheyenne, an Algonquian language of the plains, also uses noun incorporation on a regular basis. Consider nátahpe'emaheona, meaning "I have a big house", which contains the noun morpheme maheo "house".

Semantics of noun incorporation

In many cases, a phrase with an incorporated noun carries a different meaning with respect to the equivalent phrase where the noun isn't incorporated into the verb. The difference seems to hang around the generality and definiteness of the statement. The incorporated phrase is usually generic and indefinite, while the non-incorporated one is more specific.
In Yucatec Maya, for example, the phrase "I chopped a tree", when the word for "tree" is incorporated, changes its meaning to "I chopped wood". In Lahu (a Tibeto-Burman language), the definite phrase "I drink the liquor" becomes the more general "I drink liquor" when "liquor" is incorporated. The Japanese phrase 目を覚ます me o samasu means "to wake up" or literally to wake (one's) eyes. But when the direct object is incorporated into the nominal form of the verb, the resulting noun 目覚まし mezamashi literally means "waking up", but is generally used to mean "alarm clock."
This tendency isn't a rule. There are languages where noun incorporation doesn't produce a meaning change (though it may cause a change in syntax — as explained below).

Syntax of noun incorporation

Noun incorporation usually deletes one of the arguments of the verb, and in some languages this is shown explicitly. That is, if the verb is transitive, the verb word with an incorporated direct object becomes formally intransitive and marked as such. In other languages this change doesn't take place, or at least it isn't shown by explicit morphology.
In Lakhota, a Siouan language of the plains, for example, the phrase "the man is chopping wood" can be expressed either as a transitive wičháša ki čą ki kaksáhe ("man the wood the chopping") or as an intransitive wičháša ki čą-kaksáhe ("man the wood-chopping") in which the independent nominal čą, "wood," becomes a root incorporated into the verb: "wood-chopping."
The noun may not be deleted after all. In the Oneida language (an Iroquoian language spoken in Southern Ontario and Wisconsin), one finds classifier noun incorporation, a generic noun acting as a direct object can be incorporated into a verb, but a more specific direct object is left in place. In a rough translation, one would say for example "I animal-bought this pig", where "animal" is the generic incorporated noun. Note that this "classifier" isn't an actual classifier (for example a class agreement morpheme) but a common noun.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Incorporation Linguistics'.

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