This book presents synchronic and diachronic studies on verbal periphrases in a range of Romance languages to clarify the boundaries of the category, the features, origin and development of specific constructions, and the interrelations between them. In doing so, it seeks to reinforce the synergies between the theoretical contributions of grammaticalization, constructionalization, and the study of texts in their philological sense more properly, looking into the effects of discourse traditions. The individual chapters adopt diverse analytic perspectives and theoretical and methodological frameworks, and integrate results applying qualitative, quantitative, and psycholinguistic methods.