ABSTRACT
In this talk, I will provide a compositional semantics for (pseudo-)noun incorporation (PNI/NI) in analytic languages like Chinese, a relatively neglected topic in theoretical linguistics. PNIs in Chinese display dual features. On the one hand, they exhibit a constellation of properties (e.g., obligatory narrow scope, institutionalized meaning, reduced discourse capacity, restricted modification of incorporated nominals, etc.) which are typically associated with (pseudo-)incorporated structures in those polysynthetic languages. On the other, unlike other attested (pseudo-)incorporated structures, which are mostly verbal in nature, PNIs in Chinese can be used as nominalized expressions. I propose an event kind-based analysis by treating PNIs as expressions of kinds in the domain of events, where the (proto-typical) theme arguments instantiating the bare noun complements form part of the event kinds rather than function as independent semantic arguments to the verbs. To account for the duality nature of PNIs, I argue that, just like the nominal domain, a similar type-to-token conversion is applicable in the verbal domain. I will show this two-domain theory for events has some interesting empirical as well as theoretical consequences.