A Semantics for Pseudo Incorporation

This paper proposes a semantics for incorporation that does not require the incorporated nominal to form a syntactic or morphological unit with the verb. Such a semantics is needed for languages like Hindi where semantic intuitions suggest the existence of incorporation but the evidence for syntactic fusion is not compelling. A lexical alternation between regular transitive and incorporating transitive verbs is proposed to derive the particular features of Hindi incorporation. The proposed semantics derives existential force without positing existential closure over the incorporated nominal. It also builds in modality into the meaning of the incorporating verb. This proposal is compared to two other recent proposals for the interpretation of incorporated arguments. The cross-linguistic implications of the analysis developed on the basis of Hindi are also discussed. 1. Identifying Incorporation The primary identification of the phenomenon known as noun incorporation is based on morphological and syntactic evidence about the shape and position of the nominal element involved. Consider the Inuit example in (1a) as well as the more familiar example of English compounding in (1b): 1a. Angunguaq eqalut-tur-p-u-q West Greenlandic -Inuit A-ABS salmon-eat-IND-[-tr]-3S Van Geenhoven (1998) “Angunguaq ate salmon.” b. Mary went apple-picking. The thematic object in (1a) occurs inside the verbal complex, and this affects transitivity. The verb has intransitive marking and the subject has absolutive case instead of the expected ergative. The nominal itself is a bare stem. There is no determiner, case marking, plurality or modification. In other words, an incorporated nominal is an N, not a DP or an NP. Similar comments apply to the English compound in (1b), though it should be noted that English does not have [V N+V] compounds. Though the reasons for this are not particularly well-understood at this time, my purpose in introducing English compounds here is for expository purposes only. A somewhat less obvious case of noun incorporation is attested in Niuean, discussed by Massam (2001). Niuean is an SVO language with obligatory V fronting. Massam notes that in addition to expect VSO order, there also exist sentences with VOS order in Niuean: 1 There can be external modifiers with (a limited set of) determiners, case marking etc. in what is known as the phenomenon of ‘doubling’.