Noun Incorporation: Essentials and Extensions

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the principal debates in the literature on noun incorporation, citing key examples and references. There has been much discussion about which constructions can rightly fall under the term ‘noun incorporation’; for example, compounding, denominal, deverbal, light verb, conflation, and narrow scope indefinite constructions have all been treated as noun incorporation constructions. In addition, there has been much discussion about where in the grammar noun incorporation should be handled: the lexicon or the syntax. This debate has shifted with the development of theories without a clear lexicon–syntax division. In the early studies, the main focus was on the morphology of noun incorporation, but in recent years, the focus has shifted to understanding the semantics of the construction, including semantic incorporation, pseudo noun incorporation, detransitivizing, and noun stripping constructions. In addition, there have been many empirical studies over the years exploring subject and modifier incorporation, incorporation of larger phrases and other topics. Noun incorporation studies also intersect with other areas such as bare nominals, complex predicates, possessor raising constructions, and classifier systems. These issues are reviewed in this paper.