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 and Siberia, but polysynthesis does not necessarily imply incorporation.

Chukchi, a Paleosiberian language spoken in North Eastern Siberia, provides a wealth of examples of noun incorporation. The phrase t@pelark@n qoran@ 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 t@qorapelark@n, in which the noun root qora "reindeer" is incorporated into the verb word.

Mohawk 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 also uses noun incorporation on a regular basis. Consider nátahpe'emaheona, meaning "I have a big house", which contains the noun morpheme maheo "house".

Though not regularly, English shows some instrument incorporation, as in breastfeed, and direct object incorporation, as in babysit. Incorporation and plain compounding may be fuzzy categories: consider backstabbing, name-calling, knife murder.

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 is not 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 Mayan , for example, the phrase "I chopped a tree", when the word for "tree" is incorporated, changes its meaning to "I chopped wood". In Burman , the definite phrase "I drink the liquor" becomes the more general "I drink liquor" when "liquor" is incorporated.

This tendency is not a rule. There are languages where noun incorporation does not 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 does not take place, or at least it is not shown by explicit morphology.

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" is not an actual classifier (i. e. a class agreement morpheme) but a common noun.

References

• Kroeber, Alfred L. (1909). Noun incorporation in American languages. In F. Heger (Ed.), XVI Internationaler Amerikanisten-Kongress (pp. 569-576). Vienna: Hartleben.
• Kroeber, Alfred L. (1911). Incorporation as a linguistic process. American Anthropologist, 13 (4), 577-584.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1984). The evolution of noun incorporation. Language, 60 (4), 847-895.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1986). On the nature of noun incorporation. Language, 62 (1), 32-38.
• Rosen, Sara T. (1989). Two types of noun incorporation: A lexical analysis. Language, 65 (2), 294-317.
• Sadock, Jerrold M. (1980). Noun incorporation in Greenlandic: A case of syntactic word-formation. Language, 57 (2), 300-319.
• Sadock, Jerrold M. (1986). Some notes on noun incorporation. Language, 62 (1), 19-31.
• Sapir, Edward. (1911). The problem of noun incorporation in American languages. American Anthropologist, 13 (2), 250-282.

Examples and text were taken from

• Conlang: Advanced Polysynthesis (Wikibooks)
• Lexicon of Linguistics
• Noun-Incorporation (PDF, unsigned)