A Comparative Analysis of Noun Incorporation Productivity in English and German
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2017
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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Abstract
Noun incorporation (e.g. crab-walk or hand-hold) is defined by Feist (2013) as a
word or expression that includes a noun in the verbal constituent of an utterance. In this
paper, I compare the productivity of noun incorporation in English and German. My goal is
to determine whether the relationship between noun incorporation in English and German
is similar to that of nominal compounding. Berg et al. (2012) posit that German assigns a
more important role to compounding than English does, resulting in a higher occurrence of
nominal compounds in German. Specifically, their study finds that nominal compounds
composed of two constituents are more prominent and productive in German. Meyer
(1993) notes that nominal compound productivity in German has very few restrictions and
argues that picking up a German newspaper or magazine will expose the reader to a wide
range of novel noun-noun compounds. Since the expanding productivity of nominal
compounds in German is higher than in English, one might expect the same finding to be
reflected in noun incorporation. In this paper, I argue that such is not the case, and that
English makes more productive use of noun incorporation than German. I additionally
argue, along with Baker (2009) and Barrie & Mathieu (2016) that one shouldn't expect the
productivity of English and German noun incorporation to perfectly mirror Berg et al.'s
findings, since noun incorporation is a syntactic process whereas compounding is a
morphological process. In order to facilitate this study, I adopt Mithun's (1984)
classification of noun incorporation, in which she breaks the process of noun incorporation
down into four categories. Based on the existence (or lack thereof) of these four types of
noun incorporation in German and English, I conclude that English noun incorporation
displays comparatively superior productivity. To carry out this comparison, I cite examples
from a variety of studies (see Feist 2013; Barrie 2011; Barrie & Spreng 2009; Barrie &
Mathieu 2016) and additionally interview two native German speakers.