2215: Periphrastic Utility Jan 7, 2021

To update slightly the post on periphrasis from 2018, there can be linguistically significant benefits of using seemingly unnecessary words beyond just style. To recap, periphrastic language is when one uses separate words to express a grammatical relationship, such as 'did go' rather than 'went'. These are often, though by no means always with auxiliary verbs, but consider the exception with "I was blamed" with "I received the blame", which affects the grammar beyond simply intensity. Yiddish also uses periphrasis to express speed or urgency such as כאפן א קוק (khop a kuk), literally 'catch a look', or טאן א קוק (ton a kuk), literally 'do a look' meaning 'looked'.

1216: Periphrastics: Roundabout Speech Apr 8, 2018

People tend to know when use 'more' and 'most' for the comparative and superlative, and when to use '-er' and '-est', because it relies upon phonetics, but there is some discrepancy. While no native speaker would say 'beautifuler', 'lovelier' and 'more lovely', for example, are both acceptable ways of speaking, even though 'lovelier' is more conventional both historically and linguistically. When a full phrase is used such as 'most happy' or 'more funny', it is referred to as the periphrastic.

The periphrastic refers to anything that, to put it simply, is stated in a phrase when it could be one word. This also happens with verbs, such as 'let's talk' versus 'let's have a talk', or 'he pushed the door' versus 'he gave the door a push', which can be stylistically useful, but does not have any defined linguistic benefits necessarily. These commonly involve 'have', 'do', and 'give', but also 'take'. If you have examples with other words, write it in a comment.

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