| Description |
Polysynthesis is generally understood to be some form of morphological complexity in the verb, encoding information about the predicate and its related arguments. One feature associated with polysynthesis is noun incorporation, where noun and nominal structures are brought into the verbal structure. In some theories, this complex process is termed morphological, and in others, syntactic. Crow, of the Siouan family, is one language that is defined by incorporation; the process can occur with nPs, dPs, DPs, and CPs. This happens when the object of the verb is indefinite. Given this complexity, there arises the question of which approach to incorporation is the best fit for this language. Four approaches are examined here: morphological (Mithun 1984), head movement (Baker 1988, 2009), autolexical syntax (Sadock 1986, 1991), which builds on head movement, and phrasal movement (Barrie and Mathieu 2016). I will demonstrate why the first three approaches are inadequate, and why phrasal movement is the only approach that can wholly account for NI phenomena in Crow. |
