Pseudo-Incorporation in Blackfoot

Abstract

Blackfoot (Algonquian: Alberta) permits both morphologically transitive and intransitive verbs to take objects, but with different syntactic properties. This paper develops an analysis of the objects of morphologically intransitive verbs as pseudo-incorporated, in the sense introduced by Diane Massam. Diagnostic tests for the syntax and semantics of pseudo-incorporation are applied to objects of morphologically intransitive verbs. Regarding their external syntax, it is shown that pseudo-incorporated objects must be immediately post-verbal and form a VP constituent with the verb. As for their semantic properties, they are shown to be narrow-scoping, non-specific, indefinite, and cumulative in reference. With respect to their internal syntax, it is demonstrated that they can be modified by attributive adjectives and/or inflectional plural marking, but crucially they cannot host demonstrative determiners. By documenting pseudo-incorporated objects in Blackfoot, this paper contributes to the cross-linguistic evidence that incorporation can target phrasal constituents.