We examine the notion of '(inflectional) periphrasis' within the framework of Canonical Typology, and argue that the canonical approach allows us to define a logically coherent notion of periphrasis. We propose a set of canonical criteria for inflectional morphology and a set of canonical criteria for functional syntax, that is, syntactic constructions which include functional elements and which express grammatical features. We argue that canonical periphrasis is exemplified in our theoretical space of possibilities whenever a cell in a (canonically morphological) inflectional paradigm ('feature intersection') is expressed by a multiword construction which respects the canonical properties of functional syntax. We compare our canonically-based approach with the approach of other authors, notably, Ackerman & Stump (2004), who argue for three sufficient conditions for a construction to be regarded as periphrastic: feature intersection, non-compositionality and distributed exponence. We argue that non-compositionality and distributed exponence, while sometimes diagnostic of periphrasis on a language-particular basis, do not constitute canonical properties of periphrasis. We also examine crucial but neglected syntactic aspects of periphrastic constructions: recursion of periphrases and headedness of periphrastic constructions. The approach we propose allows us to distinguish between constructions in actual languages which approximate the ideal of canonical periphrasis to various degrees without committing us to a categorical distinction between periphrastic and non-periphrastic constructions. At the same time we can capture the intuition that there is in some languages a distinct identifiable set of multiword constructions whose principal role is to realize grammatical features.

We compare periphrastic (analytic, multiword) constructions with the synthetic (morphological) inflection of verbs, nouns, and adjectives. We summarize recent characterizations starting with the canonical type, in which a syntactic construction realizes cells in an inflectional paradigm which is otherwise defined by morphological features (‘feature intersection’), as in the Latin passive perfect periphrasis, and sketch various types of non-canonicity, including ‘anti-periphrasis’, in which only a small minority of lexemes have non-periphrastic realization of a given set of inflectional properties. We discuss criteria for distinguishing periphrasis from ordinary function word syntax, and especially the problems posed by clitics for the concept ‘multiword’ (the Serbian-Croatian future tense, the Hausa ‘genitive linker’, and verbal clitics in Bulgarian/Macedonian). We conclude with brief typological remarks.

On the basis of cross-linguistic data from both genetically and geographically related and unrelated languages, in this article we argue that the linguistic phenomena usually referred to as the avertive, the frustrative and the apprehensional belong not to three but to five – semantically related, and yet distinct grammatical categories, all of which involve different degrees of non-realization of the verb situation in the area of Tense-Aspect-Mood: apprehensional, avertive, frustrated initiation, frustrated completion, inconsequential. Our major goal here is to account for these grammatical categories in terms of an adequate model of linguistic categorization. For this purpose, we apply the notion of Intersective Gradience (introduced for the first time in the morphosyntactic domain in Aarts (2004, 2007) to the morphosemantic domain. Thus the present approach reconciles two major approaches to linguistic categorization: (i) the classical, Aristotelian approach and (ii) a more recent, gradience/fuzziness approach.

This chapter covers the investigation of English derivational networks. Detailed descriptions of English derivation can be found in the work of, amongst others, Marchand (1969), Bauer (1983), Adams (2001), and Plag (2003. The preparation of the data sample was based on searches in the British National Corpus (BNC), the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and the internet. Words marked as rare, obsolete or regional (e.g. nameling, adname, foretooth, cutty) in the OED were not included. On the advice of the project team, some unproductive patterns (forgive, knowledge) were left out too. Working with corpora and dictionaries meant that some derivatives, such as ones based on very productive patterns (e.g. prefixation with unor suffixation with -ness), could go under the radar. Every attempt was made to test productive patterns against the words in the sample. This brought to the surface the issue of attested vs. possible words. For example, many of the verbs in the sample give rise to sequences like pull > pullable > unpullable > unpullability. But in some cases, it was difficult to find attestations, e.g. searches on Google returned no results, and so forms like ungiveability or unsewability were not included.Another methodological issue centred around distinctions like affix, affixoid, and combining form. The guidance was to include only affixes and follow the categorization of an authoritative grammatical description. Accordingly, the chapter relies on the Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology (Bauer et al. 2013), which in turn refers to theoretical principles laid down by Dalton-Puffer and Plag (2000). Words like stoneware or waterscape were excluded since -ware and -scape are classified as splinters, while others like eyelike and firelike were left out because -like is considered a compound form. Some forms (e.g. multi-, super-) were excluded despite being classified as prefixes by Bauer et al. (2013), either because they were on the list of combining forms recommended by the project, or in the interest of bringing the English data set into line with the work done on other languages.

Bulgarian has several relevant verbal constructions, and this chapter concentrates on those where one instance of periphrasis is embedded within another. For example, the (periphrastic) future perfect has a periphrastic form of the verb ‘be’ as one component, giving a construction with embedded periphrasis. The formal account proposed for these nested constructions combines a realizational approach to morphology with a lexical non-transformational framework for syntax. While periphrasis constitutes part of the morphological paradigm, and the relatedness of different periphrastic constructions can be understood in terms of the cross-categorization of features, the syntactic structure of these constructions does not mirror the same nesting. To solve this mismatch, and to capture the nesting effect, a set of rules for Bulgarian periphrastic forms is proposed, involving realization rules which are a composition of two separate rules. The complexity of nested periphrases receives a formal account, shedding light on the syntax-morphology interface more generally.