Incorporation in Wubuy

Abstract

In Wubuy (Northern Australia), nouns can be productively incorporated into verbs and adjectives. A longstanding controversy in linguistics has revolved around the question of whether these constructions are syntactic (derived by movement) or lexical (formed in the lexicon). Here I show that the arguments which may be linked to incorporated nouns show rather more freedom than generally supposed, and in this respect display similarities to compounding. I propose an analysis using aspects of Construction Morphology (e.g. B. Baker, 2008; Booij, 2010a) but with the crucial difference that incorporation structures always admit a phrasal interpretation, rather than a lexical one.