Clitic incorporation and abstract semantic objects in idiomatic constructions

Abstract

This article analyzes inherent clitics of idiomatic constructions as verbal arguments (Jelinek, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2: 39–76, 1984; Baker, The polysynthesis parameter, Oxford University Press, 1996; Hale, On the significance of Eloise Jelinek's pronominal argument hypothesis, John Benjamins, 2003) that are translated as free variables (Delfitto, Catalan Journal of Linguistics 1: 41–69, 2002): they are anaphoric to a (hidden) nonreferential discourse topic or (right) dislocated constituent. Furthermore, since they denote abstract semantic objects (Asher, Reference to abstract objects in discourse, Kluwer, 1993), they are assumed to be semantically incorporated into the verb to which they are affixed at the syntax-semantics interface (Van Geenhoven, Semantic incorporation and indefinite descriptions, CSLI, 1998), either by unification of selecting features or by predicate modification of some role function of the event under consideration (Farkas and Swart, The semantics of incorporation, Stanford University Press, 2003; Dayal, A semantics for pseudo incorporation, Rutgers University, 2003). Whereas noun incorporation is a salient property of polysynthetic languages (as has been extensively argued in the linguistic literature [Mardirussian, Chicago Linguistic Society 11: 383–389, 1975; Mithun, Language 60: 847–894, 1984]), in this article the incorporation of clitics and nouns is argued to be a covert phenomenon of nonpolysynthetic languages, specifically in idiomatic constructions (Espinal, Property denoting objects in idiomatic constructions, John Benjamins, 2001).