Incorporation (linguistics)
Incorporation or Nominalinkorporation referred to in linguistics a special Wortbildungsart in which a noun is combined with a verb, the noun loses its syntactic independence. Incorporation is often, but not exclusively, found in North and South American polysynthetic languages. Despite the prominence in polysynthetic languages but does not accept any polysynthetic language Nominalinkorporation.
In addition, there is another, related thereto meaning in generative syntax. There, the result of a head / head movement is referred to as incorporation (see below).
Properties
The following examples are taken from the Tupinambás, an extinct language of Brazil. The sentence in example ( 1 ) as a syntactic constituent "wash" " his face " as a verb, a direct object s oβá:
( 1 ) s- oβá a- jos - éj his face 1SG - 3SG - washed "I washed his face " In Example ( 2 ) is not the case: The verb éj, "wash" has the nominal stem oβá "face" incorporated:
( 2 ) a- s- oβá - éj 1SG - 3SG - face - washed "I washed his face " The incorporation of direct objects ( the so fill the semantic role patientive ) as this is the most widespread. It may appear, inter alia, as Inkorporat other semantic roles filled elements, such as agent, instrument. In some languages (such as tupinamba and languages of the Iroquoian language family ) have incorporated elements of the same phonological shape as their free counterparts in other languages , there are special, often phonologically reduced variants for the Inkorporate.
The denotation of the above two expressions are identical. The difference is a pragmatic nature: Example ( 1 ) focused attention on the fact that a face was washed ( and nothing else ), while the incorporation involvierende example ( 2 ) rather puts the total activity in the spotlight. A questionable on scientific principles method, but which helps to give a sense of the phenomenon is the reverse engineering of such structures by means of their own language: "I face - washed him. "
Vs. genericity. referentiality
In connection with the above-mentioned fact that the incorporation of having example ( 2 ) brings the total offense in the spotlight, it is often assumed in the linguistic literature that the incorporated elements will not be used referentially, that is, that they are not on a particular object, which is referred to relate, but work generically, so rather call classes or types of objects as opposed to concrete individual objects.
Incorporation into European languages
From the English language is said to be having a few cases of incorporation, for example babysit the verb. Such expressions are by regression from nouns: formed (in this case babysitter ). Also in Germany there are some examples which show incorporation, cycling, for example, vacuuming, commit adultery or households.
Related to Idiomatisierung
Sometimes incorporation leads to the formation of fixed idiomatic expressions that pass over the lexicon of the language (such as the German verbs above ). However, this is not to be associated with the phenomenon of incorporation as such. In the above example ( 2 ) could Inkorporat "face" for example, by any other noun that is semantically related to the verb, to be replaced.
Incorporation in the syntax theory
In the minimalist syntax, the term incorporation refers to a move operation, in which the head of a phrase to the head of a higher-order phrase is moved. For example, assume that v moves the head of the verb phrase (VP) after concatenation (merge) the VP with the functional category to the head of vP (move). Syntactically form so that v and V the head of vP, is morphologically V as a verb stem, v realized as inflectional (eg as a 3rd person singular marker / -s / in English in the appropriate contexts ). We say that the V- head incorporated into the v - head.