Talk:Incorporation (linguistics)

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I'm putting this up here because I saw a link to this page and there was nothing here. My understanding of polysynthesis is very basic, though, so hopefully somebody will fix this up a bit. Ozy 01:07, 2004 Aug 10 (UTC)

I'd be interested in keeping this page but then creating a new page specifically for noun incorporation. NI is much better documented than other types of incorporation and there seems to be confusion on other pages as to what constitutes canonical NI. Any opinions on this? Straughn 17:50, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I think that until there's enough material to warrant two separate articles, it makes sense to keep it all together. Noun incorporation redirects here already, so it can be discussed here until the article gets too big. Angr (talk) 15:05, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I removed a link to a paper of mine (that I didn't put here) because it's outdated and I don't really believe it anymore. Here's a link to a current paper of mine:

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~mbarrie/Barrie2006Dissertation.pdf

although this is far from a definitive source on the subject. There are more general references that I believe should be used instead.

I just re-read the article, and the paper in question is cited as a source for the data used in the article. Of course, then, it needs to remain.

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Proposed Changes: Expansion of "the syntax of noun incorporation"

Hello,

I want to thank everyone who has worked on this page before and let you all know of a couple of changes that we will be making to this page in the coming weeks. My group members and myself are enrolled in a 300 level syntax course and are doing a final project on noun incorporation. We plan to add to the “syntax of noun incorporation” section of this page by adding further explanations, examples, and syntax trees. We will also be adding further subsections to the “syntax of noun incorporation” section on the languages “English,” “Mohawk,” “Yucatec Mayan”, and “Frisian.” This may involve incorporating some information from the original individual language wikipedia pages into these subsections.

We are open to any suggestions you may have and Thank you again for your work thus far! — Preceding unsigned comment added by NEbbutt (talk • contribs) 20:10, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Is there as source for this statement "If a language participates in productive compounding it does not allow for incorporation. An example of a compounding language is German. Respectively, if a language participates in incorporation it does not allow for productive compounding." 2600:1700:E450:3A30:3F40:F1:5F5F:64C2 (talk) 19:04, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

I also found this statement dubious, many Native American, such as in Central America (most Mayan languages and Nahuatl dialects) allow both extensive incorporation and compounding. 94.109.35.225 (talk) 12:36, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Questions and suggestion

The current text contains:

”If a language participates in productive compounding it does not allow for incorporation. An example of a compounding language is German.”

What exactly is meant here: verb compounding, or alternatively any compounding?; productive incorporation, or alternatively any incorporation at all?

NL (Dutch) has noun compounding in such everyday words as:

• ziektekostenverzekeringsmaatschappij = ziekte (illness) + kosten (costs) + verzekering (insurance) + s (“connector”) + maatschappij (company) = health insurance company;

• handschoenen = hand (hand) + schoenen (shoes) = gloves;

• wetenschapsjournalist = wetenschap (science) + journalist (journalist) = science reporter.

And there are also verbs with incorporated nouns:

• NL “stofzuigen” = “stof” (dust) + “zuigen” (to suck) = to vacuum [Ik stofzuig de kamer. = I vacuum the room.; note that the transitivity of the verb “zuigen” carries over to the similarly transitive verb “stofzuigen”.]

• NL “raadplegen” = “raad” (council) + “plegen” (commit, carry out) = to consult

DE (German) similarly has:

• DE “staubsaugen” = “staub” (dust) + “saugen” (to suck) = to vacuum

Whether noun incorporation in NL (and/or DE) is productive, I do not know.Redav (talk) 13:56, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

TLDR: Seems bogus, not going to lie. All natural languages are supposed to have compound nouns per Wikipedia; Despite, like, one theoretician's analysis, Frisian in particular is largely acknowledged to have incorporation; Ainu exhibits incorporation, noun+noun compounds and 'compounding' in general. I'm not sure where this is coming from.

This point hardly needs to be expanded upon on this talk page, but it's actually been bugging me. The quote is "If a language participates in productive compounding it does not allow for incorporation. An example of a compounding language is German. Respectively [sic], if a language participates in incorporation it does not allow for productive compounding." I am assuming that 'productive compounding' is supposed to mean 'noun compounding'. What else would we be talking about in the case of German...?? In any event, here are some points, for what they're worth:

- The page 'Compound (linguistics)' currently states: 'All natural languages have compound nouns.' That alone seems pretty conclusive, if not intuitive.

- There is supposed to be straight up noun incorporation in Frisian (the reference is Dyk 1997 Noun Incorporation in Frisian, https://pure.knaw.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/483642/dissNIinFrisian.pdf. I cannot fathom what is different between Frisian and German that would make them distinct for this discussion, in terms of any kind of 'compounding' whatsoever. The comment left by the 300 level syntax course mentions Frisian, and it's been disregarded for whatever reason. My speculation is that the reason is theoretical - whatever is in Frisian (and by extension, the rest of Germanic) may have been treated as somehow *not* incorporation (c.f. this work of theoretical syntax in 2016 https://repository.upenn.edu/handle/20.500.14332/45104), and the vague assertion above might be somehow related to that choice, but obviously we can't tell at this end of the line. Researchers nonetheless continue to treat it Frisian as indeed featuring incorporation, quite unphased (e.g., this one in 2021: https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2020-2054, p. 216).

- Finally, I am, right now, looking at Tamura's The Ainu Language (Sanseido, 1988, Engl. transl. 2000 from the encyclopedia Gengogaku Daijiten). Ainu is touted as a singular example of an incorporating language in other literature, and this grammar has a whole subsection, 5.1.4, entitled "The Formation of Compound Nouns," amid other kinds of 'compounding', verbal and nominal. 5.1 seems to imply that all compounding, both incorporation and nominal compounding, is productive. Likewise, the Handbook of the Ainu Language (ed. Bugaeva 2022, ch. 16 Sato, p. 549), on its chapter on incorporation, states point-blank as its first sentence: "Like many languages in the world, Ainu has noun incorporation (hereafter NI) as a productive means for word formation." And the entire volume mentions noun-noun compounds intermittently, among other types.

So yeah, that little universal-oid (which I cannot find on the online Konstanz archive, btw) needs a small armada of citations, because if it does have any scholarly backing, it's likely a proposal somewhere in somebody's syntax works, rather than a rigorously tested claim with widespread acceptance. 178.232.236.38 (talk) 00:33, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

English

There is a section under the title "Examples from different languages"/"Non-polysynthetic languages" on English. But every single example in this section has the -ing form of the verb; and if you try to replace those forms with an inflected form of the verb, the result is ungrammatical: *"I elk-hunted the other day", *"Peter teacup-decorates", *"Will watch-collects" etc. I would think what this demonstrates is that the grammatical examples are actually noun-noun compounding, using the participial form of the verb (where the -ing form is either optionally a noun, or ambiguously noun+verb). However, I don't know of studies that say this, so my opinion could be seen as original research. Does anyone know of work on this? Afaik, the only real example(s) of noun incorporation into English are the one(s) in the other section entitled "English" up at the top of the article, namely 'baby-sit' and possibly 'breast-feed'. Mcswell (talk) 16:14, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

While I'm here: https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal:267906 . If you can find this work in a PDF (I saw it floating around the internet somewhere). IIRC, the researcher proposes that NI can arise from back formations like that, where you get something like 'horseback-riding' --> 'he horseback-rode to town on Thursday', and then later it becomes a regular process. That might be a scholarly opinion to cite. (For what its worth, sometimes I (English L1) do that every once in a while; the other day I told a roommate that I didn't intend to sleep-deprive him, or something like that. I also saw an online news article recently which used 'ethnic-cleanse' as a finite verb). 178.232.236.38 (talk) 00:44, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Potential Re-organization

Why are there two sections of examples: "Examples of incorporation" up near the top of the article, and "Examples from different languages" near the bottom? I realize that a few examples near the top might help a reader figure out what the article is about, but most of the examples in the first section go beyond that, and are partly duplicated by the examples in the other section (in fact the language examples near the top are in some cases more detailed than those near the bottom--Oneida, for example).

In general, I think the article stands in need of some re-organization--it's not clear, for example, that everything under the heading of "Syntax of noun incorporation" really falls under that topic. I could do that, but since it's likely to be a major edit job, I'd rather see a consensus before I try that (or see someone else volunteer to do it). Mcswell (talk) 16:14, 28 January 2025 (UTC)