Periphrasis in Archi1

The Nakh-Daghestanian language Archi has several types of verbal constructions: periphrases, complex predicates, and phenomena very similar to serial verb constructions. This chapter investigates these constructions, using the approach of canonical typology; this allows different constructions to be ranked in terms of their proximity to the canonical centre. The analysis suggested is relevant for the general typology of multiword constructions, since it identifies tests for distinguishing them: for complex predicates the test will be their syntactic behaviour, for constructions close to serialization it is the fact that they are only available for a subset of verbs, while periphrasis is exhaustive. The chapter also has a descriptive purpose: published research on Archi does not describe all the available meanings for the periphrastic constructions nor their syntactic behaviour, and so an attempt is made to fill these gaps.