Incorporation in Chukchi

Noun Incorporation in Chukchi is shown to exhibit many of the characteristics that would be expected on a syntactic analysis of incorporation (e.g. Baker 1988): it is productive, the incorporated element may be referential, subjects can only be incorporated from unaccusative verbs, and noun incorporation feeds a process of Dative Shift, just as predicted on Baker's syntactic account. However, several properties are incompatible with this. In particular, Chukchi freely allows incorporation of adjuncts (which would violate the ECP on Baker's account). In addition, nouns incorporate their modifiers/specifiers, in a way not predicted by a syntactic (head movement) theory. Moreover, Chukchi permits incorporation of aspectual/ temporal elements, which contradicts even the much weaker version of Baker's thesis proposed by Rivero 1992 to handle adverb incorporation in Greek. The data are, however, broadly compatible with a lexical analysis along the lines of Rosen 1989.*