Re: verb-noun-incorporation mania

On Mon, 19 Nov 2001 14:41:14 -0500 "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
writes:
> In the process of getting ideas for revamping my conlang, I came up
> with
> this (probably totally insane) verbal/nominal incorporation
> mechanism.
> Basically, the idea is that verbs do not need to be standalone; they
> can
> stick themselves into the middle of a noun. And multiple nouns in
> the same
> sentence can have these attached verbs. For example:
This is not unprecedented.  However, in every analysis I've ever seen,
both of conlangs and natlangs, we call this noun-incorporation.  The verb
is viewed as central and the noun is said to incorporate into the verb.

> eTuw'mab0 Kyy'kh3tau t3 my'd3m3l fww'tujub0' teme.
> "I-asserting hurting-to-woman, no-prettiness showing-from-you!"
>
> In English, "I said to the woman, hurting her, You are not pretty!"
>
> Analysis:
>
> eTuw'mab0       [&t<h>u.u".ma.bO] (Kirsch)
>         Built from _eb0'_, "I" (originative) and _Tuw'ma_, "to
> assert"
>         (deliberative).
>         e-      masculine proper name prefix (always used with 1st
> person
>                 pronoun -- this is an idiosyncrasy of the language)
>         Tuw'ma  incorporated verb, "to assert"
>         b0'     the second half of _eb0'_, "I", originative case.
Here's something interesting.  It is more common for objects to
incorporate than subjects, and if this is subject-incorporation, how is
it different from subject agreement?

> Kyy'kh3tau      [k<h>y:x@ta.u]
>         Built from _Kyy'kh_, perfective of _Ke'kh, "to hurt", "to
> harm",
>         "to wound", and _biz3tau'_, receptive case of _biz3tai'_,
> "woman".
>         Kyy'kh  incorporated verb
>         -etau   contraction from _biz3tau_, "woman".
This looks more like object incorporation of the usual type.  This also
avoids the very weird circumfix-ish thing that you had on the previous
example.

> (snip)
> The idea behind this (convoluted) construction is that the same
> action can
> ave multiple verbs to describe it, relative to the role of each
> associated noun.
I think a syntactician would analyze this differently, but since I'm not
a syntactician I can't say for sure.  It almost seems like a serial-verb
construction, where verbs with separate objects but the same subject are
strung together.  In this case the "subject," being the originator, is
constant through the phrase, but various verbs are used in series to
describe different aspects of the action.  (Excuse the hideously bad
explanation of a serial verb.)

> What do my fellow conlangers think of this idea? Is it plausible?
> Implausible? Outrageous? :-)
Plausible.  Interesting.  I wish I could offer better remarks, but this
is pretty far outside of my area of specialization.


Jesse S. Bangs     Pelíran
jaspax@ juno.com
"We couldn't all be cowboys
Some of us are clowns" --Counting Crows

Replies