Abstract: The linguistic description of a literary text involves consideration of its semantic structure, by which, following L. A. Novikov, we understand the system of images of the work and the linguistic means of their embodiment in the author's text. Peripheral combinations play a significant role in the arsenal of artistic techniques of N.M. Karamzin, implemented in sentimental novels, and demonstrate primarily the functions of indicating feelings and states, embellishing speech, author's characterization and poetization of prose text. The subject of the study of the analyzed text of N. M. Karamzin's novella "Natalia, the boyar's daughter" is periphrasis as a special means of creating a semantic structure. The relevance of the work is due to the clarification of the status of the periphrase as an important structural element of the sentimental story. The aim of the work was to clarify the concept of periphrasis in the modern and preceding N. M. Karamzin literary tradition and highlight its functions in the texts of the stories.  The methodological basis of the study was the work of Russian linguists of the V. V. Vinogradov school, based on a system-functional approach to the analysis of the language of fiction. The conducted research allowed us to conclude that the periphrasis is the basis of N. M. Karamzin's imagery and implements the functions of speech decoration; characterization, in which the periphrasis contains the author's attitude to the hero; stylistically marked periphrastic combinations serve to separate parts of the story, for example, the author's digression and the main text of the story. The novelty of the research lies in clarifying the functions of the periphrasis as the central means of the semantic structure of the sentimental story.
Periphrases are becoming one of the new tools for constructing the semantic structure of a prose work of the emerging aesthetics of sentimentalism. The use of periphrases is included in the concept of reforming the Russian language by introducing elements peculiar to the sentimental style of French salon literature into the text, while generally ordering syntax at the level of a simple and complex sentence.