noun incorporation in Nahuatl

[David Eddyshaw]

Heike Bödeker <heike.boedeker at NETCOLOGNE.DE> writes:

> Dear David,
> 
> > Quite often in general linguistic discussions of polysynthesis I've
> > come across the assertion that incorporated objects in Nahuatl can
> > be referential
> 
> Just out of curiosity: who did write that where and when?
> 

eg in passing in Mark Baker's stuff about his (in my deeply expert ;-) view) highly implausible "polysynthesis parameter".

The only (alleged) actual example I've found comes from Jeff McSwain, SW journal of Linguistics, Vol 17, No. 2 (1998), in SE Puebla Nahuatl:

Onikitak tlakemetl, gika nitlakekoas

which he glosses
"I saw some clothes, so I'm going to buy the clothes"

which I must say doesn't strike me as very convincing, inasmuch as I  can see no reason not to render the last word along the lines of "I'll go clothes-buying"

I brought this up because it seems so much at variance with the whole plan of Nahuatl grammar; my reading of Andrews and Launey's grammars seems basicallly to rule out particular reference for incorporated objects, but I'm no sort of expert on Nahuatl so thought it could just be my ignorance.

There certainly do exist languages, however, in which incorporated noun objects can have particular reference, eg. the Australian language Mayali. THere's a whole literature about diffent sorts of noun incorporation in this regard (as I expect you know better than I do)

Thanks for the reply

David