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ZM In morphology, periphrasis is when you use a phrase rather than a single verb form. for example, in Latin the present indicative active and passive forms of a verb are a single verb form:
Quote:
amo 'I love' and amor 'I am loved'. In the English glosses to those two forms, the second one, the passive, is a periphrastic construction.

Yes, I understood right away that here periphrastic is used for a grammatical construction. You cannot get behind this when you look it up as an independant word in a dictionary.
FALD.
Quote:
This is all in aid of my internal rantings against the Huddleston/Pullum categorization of bush as a preposition in the sentence 'On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush on their own.'
People like to make these constructions, whatever you call it grammatically, as a way of being creative with language. (often in advertizing) It can be irritating when those things become too fashionable.
I hope the chicks made it safely to the bush though God knows which chick devouring creatures were lurking there.

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Originally Posted By: zmjezhd


Yeah but, you cannot replace it with another noun AFAIK. You can replace it with an adverb or a preposition or two.


Umm. Lessee. 'On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush (north/east/south/west/home) on their own.'

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(north/east/south/west/home)

All adverbs for me. It's pretty uncontroversial categorization, (see, for instance, A-H link). YMMV. I should also say, bush is not an adverb for me, but I see how Pullum could analyze it that way for the Australians who made the utterance..


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What about a gerund like "hunting?"

I suppose if the -ing form was used as a noun, it'd be OK., But remember those forms are sometimes adjectives. Cf. His hunting days are over with Hunting gave him great joy.

1. On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush on their own.

2. On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head hunting on their own.

For me both sentences are weird, but then I don't savvy Strine.


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Thanks, too, as this is all new to me.

You're welcome.


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Originally Posted By: zmjezhd
What about a gerund like "hunting?"

1. On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush on their own.
'
Still with number 1. Does it look strange because when heading means moving somewhere, it is usually followed by 'for'?

VERB:
intr.
To proceed or go in a certain direction: head for town.
To form a head, as lettuce or cabbage.
To originate, as a stream or river; rise.

I mean, this looks quite kosher, I think.

On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head for bush on their own.

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On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head for bush on their own.

I would write: On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head for the bush on their own. The prepositional phrase for the bush fills the adverbial adjunct slot in this sentence for me. Pullum is not saying that bush has become preposition in standard English, he was just enthusing over a preposition in the birthing process. For those who like their grammar and language fixed, like a butterfly pinned to a placard, this can be annoying.


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Yes, the the sounds even betterder. But head bush is fine with me. I think I'll head book for the rest of the day. grin

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I think it can be correct without the article, but it definitely needs the preposition in the northern hemisphere.

On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head for (shelter, town, Mom, high ground, etc., none of which requires an article) on their own


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I should have written:(within this context) I'll head book and read for the rest of the day.
It can become really ugly when like me people take it one step further by messing it up. Since the seventees we are left with results from people making creative derivations from bibliotheek=library. People thought it cute to combine all sorts of words with the ending: "theek" .
From art-o-theek , which was still an artworks lending service to
Snack-o-Theek, the old fashioned cafetaria or "frietkot".
(fiets/Bike-o-Theek, speel/Play-o-theek, kook/Cook-o-theek) Things that no longer have to do with preservation or lending at all.

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