Pseudo Noun Incorporation in Niuean

This paper examines a phenomenon of Niuean (Oceanic) often called Noun Incorporation (NI). It is shown that, since the nominal element in these constructions is a phrase (NP) rather than a head (N-0), this phenomenon does not in fact constitute NI in the normal sense of the term. Instead, it is termed Pseudo Noun Incorporation, or PNI. An analysis is presented in which an object NP (rather than DP) is generated adjacent to a verb. Since NP cannot check absolutive case, it fails to move out of VP, hence it undergoes predicate fronting along with the verb to derive the `incorporated' order V-O-PARTICLES-S-X: the normal order is V-PARTICLES-S-O-X. The properties of three subtypes of PNI are examined in some detail: general PNI, existential PNI, and instrumental PNI, and the analysis is developed to account for their properties. General PNI involves the generation of an NP object, in which the referential position remains open, resulting in a habitual reading for the sentence. Instrumental PNI is similar, except it does not have the same aspectual consequences. In existential PNI, on the other hand, an existential verb (fai `have/be', muhu `have plenty/be plentiful') binds the position in NP, thus allowing the NP to be referential and to be modified by a relative clause. Existential PNI thus results from a hybrid V/DET category (such as fai) which simultaneously binds the open position in NP and acts as the head predicate of the sentence. We see that the properties of Niuean PNI do not fit into the various typologies of NI available in the literature, hence a novel analysis is required, such as the one proposed in this paper.