Re: CHAT: Nakiltipkaspimak

Patrick Dunn wrote:

>On Tue, 10 Oct 2000, Marcus Smith wrote:
>
> > Daniel Andreasson wrote:
> >
> > >So I thought I'd try creating a language I'm not very used to.
> > >It's ergative, agglutinating, noun-incorporating and has a very
> > >small phoneme inventory.
> >
> > Yay!! Another conlang with noun-incorporation! I love this feature!
>
>I don't think I understand noun-incorporation.  Would you explain it?
Certainly.

Noun incorporation is when you take a word that would be an object and you
attach it to the verb. This has the affect of turning a normally transitive
verb into an intransitive one. Some intransitive verbs allow the subjects
to incorporate. Some English examples,

I saw the boy. -> I boy-saw.
I washed the car. -> I car-washed.
The dress is wet. -> Dress-wet.

In a few very cool languages like Mohawk and Comanche you can leave
material from the object phrase behind. But that feature is not that
common, AFAIK.

I bought that jacket. -> I jacket-bought that.
I saw the red car. -> I car-saw the red.

(Note though, that most NI languages do not have definite articles, or if
they do, the definite article does not appear in the NI sentences.)

In all languages AFAIK, incorporating the noun requires that the noun may
not have any morphology attached to it: no case marking, no possessives, no
number, etc. Also, if the verb agrees with its direct object, once
incorporation takes place the verb cannot agree with it anymore. (There are
exceptions to that though.)




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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
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