Periphrasis

This is a proposal for a morphological treatment of mixed auxiliation in Italo-Romance. We analyse mixed auxiliation patterns, particularly in reflexive verbs, as cases of heteroclisis, mixing two (sub) inflection classes marked by an auxiliary rather than an affix.

Bach, Xavier & Štichauer, Pavel. 2022. Auxiliary selection in Italo-Romance and inflexional classes. In Adam Ledgeway, John Charles Smith, and Nigel Vincent (eds), Periphrasis and Inflexion in Diachrony: A View from Romance. Oxford: OUP.

 Visiting Mixed auxiliation patterns have long been studied in Italo-Romance varieties, as well as (Northern) Catalan. In this study, we show that it is also common in Gallo-Romance varieties, by exploring the data available in the Atlas Linguistique de la France, supplemented by dialect descriptions.

Work in collaboration with Dr Pavel Štichauer (Charles University, Prague), which will be pursued during a Visiting Professorship at Charles University Prague in February 2025.

We analyse the data avilable in the Atlante Sintattico d'Italia to uncover new attestations of mixed auxiliation patterns in Italo-Romance dialects.

Work in collaboration with Dr Pavel Štichauer (Charles University, Prague)

It is often believed that the lexical part of periphrastic structures does not show suppletion. A large number of northern Gallo-Romance varieties show exactly this type of suppletion, whose patterns and origins are explored here.

Bach, Xavier. 2022. Overlapping suppletion and periphrasis: On HAVE, BE, and GO in Gallo-Romance. Word Structure 15(2), 115–137.

 In the Aspe Valley, inflectional periphrasis in the preterite is limited to just one verb, 'to go'. All other verbs inflect synthetically. Similar phenomena occur in other Pyrenean valleys.

In medieval Occitan, the periphrasis anar 'go' + infinitive was used as an alternative to a preterite past tense, even more than in Catalan. In Modern Occitan, most varieties now interpret this construction as a future tense. This work traces how and why this changed from past to future occurred.

Presentation at Chronos 15, Toulouse, May 2024.

A contribution to the ANR-DFG funded ComPLETE project on complex predicates in the languages of the world.