Re: CHAT: Nakiltipkaspimak

Please, please, I beg of you, oh wise and terrible ones, at whom the sages
tremble . . . (sorry, been reading 19 C. Fiction again -- always makes me
flowery)  Could you please explain to me what incorporation is?  Sounds
fascinating, but I'm just getting fringes and edges of the conversation
here.

On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Daniel Andreasson wrote:

> Marcus wrote:
>
> > He has tons of good and interesting examples -- Baker is the King of
> > Incorporation in the generative tradition (ie, he had the best theory).
> > Unfortunately, the new theory he has in "The Polysynthesis Parameter"
> > doesn't make much sense. You may notice that he does not ever mention
> Ainu
> > in his discussion of NI, though there are plenty of Ainu examples in
> other
> > parts of the book -- it is because his theory does not accout for that
> > language at all. He never even mentions that Ainu is full of
> > counter-examples to his claim. (That was just one portion of the book
> that
> > irritated me.)
>
> Okay, then. I'm not a fan of the generative tradition so I guess I'll
> just read the examples carefully and take the rest like I take a
> tequila. (With some salt that is, not with lemon... :p ).
>
> > > Yeah. I wanted there to be connections. Though not too obvious
> > > everywhere.
>
> > That's what I did for Telek as well. :-)
>
> That must be the ultimate way to go then. Hihi. :)
>
> > >Oops. The incorporated pronoun in combination with the zero-morpheme
> > >for 3SG must have confused me. This should of course be:
> > >
> > >pilik-0    mis-0  -kulan-0   -xut
> > >boy  -ABS  1SG-3SG-cut  -PAST-PERF
> > >'The boy cut me.'
> > >
> > >Though, if I had said the example out loud you wouldn't have heard
> > >any difference. :)
>
> > All the examples you gave after that one also had the wrong order. :-) I
> > can't criticize you though, I've done the same sort of thing many times.
>
> What!? Holy macarony! You're right! I wonder why I did that. For some
> reason I seem to prefer that order subconsciously. Well. Perhaps it has
> to do with my built-in universal grammar which says that derivational
> elements should be closer to the root than inflectional ones. And a person
> agreement prefix seems more inflectional than an incorporated noun. :)
>
> Daniel
>

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