Towards the identification of verbal periphrasis in Ancient Greek: a prototype analysis

This paper discusses how to identify so-called 'periphrastic' constructions in Ancient Greek. I characterise verbal periphrasis as a prototypically organised category, with central or 'prototypical' members and more peripheral ones. By applying a number of generally accepted criteria of periphrasticity to a corpus of examples, I argue that we can distinguish between four groups of constructions considered periphrastic in the secondary literature.This paper discusses how to identify so-called 'periphrastic' constructions in Ancient Greek. I characterise verbal periphrasis as a prototypically organised category, with central or 'prototypical' members and more peripheral ones. By applying a number of generally accepted criteria of periphrasticity to a corpus of examples, I argue that we can distinguish between four groups of constructions considered periphrastic in the secondary literature.A