Грамматикалық санаттардың бірігіп, бастапқы синтаксистік қызметін сақтауы

When a grammatical category forms a compound while retaining original syntactic function

In linguistics, incorporation is a phenomenon by which a grammatical category, such as a verb, forms a compound with its direct object (object incorporation) or adverbial modifier, while retaining its original syntactic function. The inclusion of a noun qualifies the verb, narrowing its scope rather than making reference to a specific entity. Incorporation is central to many polysynthetic languages such as those found in North America, Siberia and northern Australia. However, polysynthesis does not necessarily imply incorporation (Mithun 2009), and the presence of incorporation does not imply that the language is polysynthetic.

Although incorporation does not occur regularly, English uses it sometimes: breastfeed, and direct object incorporation, as in babysit. Etymologically, such verbs in English are usually back formations: the verbs breastfeed and babysit are formed from the adjective breast fed and the noun babysitter respectively. Incorporation and plain compounding may be fuzzy categories: consider backstabbing, name calling, axe murder.

The following example from Oneida (Iroquoian) illustrates noun incorporation. In this example, the verbal root hninu appears with its usual verbal morphology: a factive marker (FACT), which very roughly translates as past tense, although this is not quite accurate; an agreement marker (1. SG), which tells us that the verb agrees with 1st person singular (the speaker); and an aspect marker, punctual (PUNC), which tells us that this is a completed event. The direct object ne kanaktaʼ follows the verb. The function of the particle ne is to determine the bed: in the example, I bought this specific bed. The word for bed consists of a root nakt plus a prefix and a suffix. The notion of the root is important here, but the properties of the prefix and suffix do not matter for this discussion. In the following sentence, the bed is unspecified. Unspecified nouns can be incorporated, thus creating a general statement. In this example: I bought a bed (and not a specific bed). In a broader sense, depending on context, it can even mean that I am a bed buyer, as in: I am a trader of beds, buying beds is my profession. In this example, the root for bed nakt has incorporated into the verbal construction and appears before the verbal root. Two other incidental changes are noticed here. First, the agreement marker in the first example is k and in the second example is ke. These are two phonologically conditioned allomorphs. In other words, the choice between using k and ke is based on the other sounds in the word (and has nothing to do with noun incorporation). Also, there is an epenthetic vowel a between the nominal and verbal roots. This vowel is inserted to break up an illegal consonant cluster (and also has nothing to do with noun incorporation).

The next example, from Panare, illustrates the cross linguistically common phenomenon that the incorporated form of a noun may be significantly different from its unincorporated form. The first sentence contains the incorporated form u' of "head", and the second its unincorporated form ipu:

Chukchi, a Chukotko Kamchatkan language spoken in North Eastern Siberia, provides a wealth of examples of noun incorporation. The phrase təpelarkən qoraŋə means "I'm leaving the reindeer" and has two words (the verb in the first person singular, and the noun). The same idea can be expressed with the single word təqorapelarkən, in which the noun root qora "reindeer" is incorporated into the verb word.

Mohawk, an Iroquoian language, makes heavy use of incorporation, as in: watia'tawi'tsherí:io "it is a good shirt", where the noun root atia'tawi "upper body garment" is present inside the verb.

Cheyenne, an Algonquian language of the plains, also uses noun incorporation on a regular basis. Consider nátahpe'emaheona, meaning "I have a big house", which contains the noun morpheme maheo "house".

Chinese makes extensive use of verb object compounds, which are compounds composed of two constituents having the syntactic relation of verb and its direct object. For example, the verb 睡覺 'sleep (VO)' is composed of the verb 睡 'sleep (V)' and the bound morpheme object 覺 'sleep (N)'. Aspect markers (e. g. 了 PERFECTIVE), classifier phrases (e. g. 三個鐘頭 THREE + CL + hours), and other elements may separate the two constituents of these compounds, though different verb object compounds vary in degree of separability.

In many cases, a phrase with an incorporated noun carries a different meaning with respect to the equivalent phrase where the noun is not incorporated into the verb. The difference seems to hang around the generality and definiteness of the statement. The incorporated phrase is usually generic and indefinite, while the non incorporated one is more specific. In Yucatec Maya, for example, the phrase "I chopped a tree", when the word for "tree" is incorporated, changes its meaning to "I chopped wood". In Lahu (a Tibeto Burman language), the definite phrase "I drink the liquor" becomes the more general "I drink liquor" when "liquor" is incorporated. The Japanese phrase 目を覚ます me o samasu means "to wake up" or literally to wake (one's) eyes. But when the direct object is incorporated into the nominal form of the verb, the resulting noun 目覚まし mezamashi literally means "waking up", as in 目覚まし時計　mezamashidokei meaning "alarm clock." This tendency is not a rule. There are languages where noun incorporation does not produce a meaning change (though it may cause a change in syntax — as explained below).

An influential definition of noun incorporation (NI) by Sapir (1911) and Mithun (1984) has stated that NI is “a construction in which a noun and a verb stem combine to yield a complex verb.” Due to the wide variation in how noun incorporation presents itself in different languages, however, it is difficult to create an agreed upon and all encompassing definition. As a result, most syntacticians have focused on generating definitions that apply to the languages they have studied, regardless of whether or not they are cross linguistically attested. Noun incorporation can interact with the transitivity of the verb it applies to in two different ways. In some languages, the incorporated noun deletes one of the arguments of the verb, and this is shown explicitly: if the verb is transitive, the derived verb word with an incorporated noun (which functions as the direct object) becomes formally intransitive and is marked as such. In other languages this change does not take place, or at least it is not shown by explicit morphology. A recent study found out that across languages, morphosyntactically highly transitive verbs and patientive intransitive verbs are most likely to perform noun incorporation. Incorporation looks at whether verb arguments, its nominal complements, exist on the same syntactic level or not. Incorporation is characterized as a stem combination meaning it combines independent lexical items into a modal or auxiliary verb to ultimately form a complex verb. The stem of the verb will be the determiner of the new category in which the incorporation belongs and the noun which was incorporated drops its own categorical features and grammatical markings, if employed. This can be observed in Onondaga, Southern Tiwa and Koryak.

In 1985, Mithun introduced a four type system to define the functionality and progression of noun incorporation in a language. Within this section, we will focus on describing the influential syntactic and combined approaches to NI, though it is important to note that highly influential lexical accounts, such as Rosen's (1989) paper do exist. One highly influential syntactic account for NI is the head movement process proposed by Baker (1988). This account states that this NI head movement is distinct from but similar to the better established phenomenon of phrase movement and involves the movement of a head noun out of object position and into a position where it adjoins to a governing verb. An example of this movement can be seen in figure 1 where the head noun 'baby' is moved out of the object N position to become incorporated with the verb as the sister to the verb 'sit'. While this theory does not account for every language, it does provide a starting point for subsequent syntactic analyses of NI, both with and without head movement. A more recent paper by Baker (2007) addresses a number of other influential accounts including Massam’s pseudo incorporation, Van Geenhoven’s base generation, and Koopman and Szabolcsi’s small phrase movement. It was concluded that while each have their strong points, they all fail to answer some important questions, thus requiring the continued use of Baker's head movement account.

A polysynthetic language is a language in which multiple morphemes, including affixes are often present within a single word. Each word can therefore express the meaning of full clauses or phrase and this structure has implications on how noun incorporation is exhibited in the languages in which it's observed.

In Lakhota, a Siouan language of the plains, for example, the phrase "the man is chopping wood" can be expressed either as a transitive wičháša kiŋ čháŋ kiŋ kaksáhe ("man the wood the chopping") or as an intransitive wičháša kiŋ čhaŋkáksahe ("man the wood chopping") in which the independent nominal čháŋ, "wood," becomes a root incorporated into the verb: "wood chopping."