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4min chapter
Conlangery #39: Noun Incorporation
Conlangery Podcast
Incorporation of Nouns
Noun incorporation is always special. There is no language in which you have an incorporated noun statement that does not have an equivalent that does not use the incorporation available. Location and instrument are especially common so that you could say something like I market go. It's possible to have other kinds of intransitive verbs be or take noun and corporation. In English it is possible to have an intransitive verb incorporate the subject. This is very rare but again mohawk my favorite example of wonderful incorporation madness.
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Speaker 2
Yeah it seems sort of like a great area because sometimes it's it's it's a little bit awkward. But anyway right
Speaker 1
well this is this is why we have field linguists to go out and they collect data and they have arguments about what's actually going on and they say no the perfective particle has moved off to the right of the verb and now it's following a noun therefore incorporation.
Speaker 3
So yeah right um
Speaker 1
what was going to say uh my
Speaker 3
examples
Speaker 1
so far have been I've been using um incorporation of basically direct objects. But that is by no means the only possibility. Location and instrument are especially common so that you could say something like
Speaker 2
I market go. Interesting. Now is there is there a hierarchy of which ones are more common than others or? Well not
Speaker 1
that I know direct object is definitely the most common. It's all over the literature with these others somewhat less likely. Okay um and I've mentioned before my love of instrumental prefixes as derivational elements and those are an example of a particular kind of non-acorporation that got fossilized and then grammaticalized.
Speaker 3
I see.
Speaker 1
Interesting because this whole time I've been quiet but I'm thinking of how to make this into some sort of derivational thing. Right right um and uh right um so far we've also been using compounds with verbs that are transitive. Even with type one and you end up with a new transitive verb the core verb is basically transitive but
Speaker 3
it is possible
Speaker 1
like I said with the market go example. Um but it's possible to have other kinds of intransitive verbs be or take noun and corporation. Um could you use the noun and corporation with a verb that is strictly intransitive in order to say something because you don't have a happy transitive equivalent? Uh that's interesting I don't know I would think not okay because here's the thing noun incorporation is always special. There is no language
Speaker 3
in which
Speaker 1
you have an incorporated noun statement that does not have an equivalent that does not use the incorporation available. Hmm okay. It's
Speaker 3
intriguing.
Speaker 1
Yeah I'll think about it. Right so incorporation gets used for different kinds of things. Now type one is more clearly lexical but the other ones you're gonna have a simple non-incorporating statement is always going to be available as another possibility. All
Speaker 2
right um what
Speaker 1
I was thinking about intransitive verbs it is possible to have an intransitive verb incorporate the subject. This is very rare but again mohawk my favorite example of wonderful incorporation madness um will do this so that you have basically double subject marking where you have the incorporated noun and the necessary verb affixes. Can you give us an example? I do not have a mohawk example at hand. Um somebody else talking I can look when up. We'll just pause and then we can edit it. Or we could do that.
Speaker 2
Yeah well I mean
Speaker 1
would it be something like I am self-washing or? No no um self would
Speaker 2
be an object in that case. That's true.
Speaker 1
Like something like um well it's kind of hard to do it in English because you're not going to get anything. No
Speaker 3
you can say things like
Speaker 1
the house is dark it house darks.
Speaker 3
But you wouldn't
Speaker 1
have like the it there and the third person. Oh no yes you would. Yes yes. Okay yes that's the part that makes it funky.
Speaker 2
It seems like would you do
Speaker 1
that for like whether you
Speaker 2
could.
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