Rethinking "defective goal": Clitics and noun incorporation

In this paper we revisit Mithun’s (1984) classic typology of noun incorporation (NI)
constructions and offer an analysis for the various types of NI using Roberts’ (2010)
notion of “defective goal”. We suggest that the cross-linguistic variation across NI
types can be captured by three parameters: (i) whether the host of the incorporated
nominal element is V or v, (ii) whether the incorporate is n or D with a referential
index, and (iii) whether the object is a “defective goal” or not.