Abstract
This paper explores changes of verb valency by means of noun-incorporation. We claim that noun-incorporation in English manifests itself in verbs formed by compression and backformation, such as to baby-sit, to head-hunt, to whistle-blow, and denominal verbs formed by transmutation, for example to doctor, to nest, to knife. Analysis of more than 6500 contexts with English incorporation complexes taken from corpora has shown that noun-incorporation in English leads to simple or complex change of valency. Semantically a sentence with noun-incorporation can be either complicated, due to extra connotations and metaphorical meanings of incorporation complexes, or simplified, due to reduction of semantic valency and morphosyntactic reduction.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
