Scribal and phraseological variation in legal formulas: ὑπάρχω + dative or genitive pronoun

• Authors: Stolk Joanne Vera
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The verb ὑπάρχω, ‘to belong to’, is frequently used in Greek papyri to denote possession in legal documents. The possessor in such constructions can be indicated by a personal pronoun in the dative or genitive. In this article, I show that the diachronic scribal and phraseological variation that is found in legal formulae with this verb points not only to an increase in the use of the genitive pronoun by individual scribes in certain constructions, but also to a general change from a dative to a genitive case in liability clauses in the Byzantine period. These changes may be connected to the process of dative case syncretism in post-Classical Greek.

Keywords

EN

Greek papyrology Greek linguistics formulaic expressions; legal language; phraseological variation; dative; genitive; case syncretism; language change

• Publisher: Fundacja im. Rafała Taubenschlaga
• Journal: The Journal of Juristic Papyrology
• Year: 2015
• Issue: 45
• Pages: 255-290

Dates

published

2015

Contributors

author

Stolk Joanne Vera

• University of Oslo Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas
• Ghent University Department of Linguistics Blandijnberg 2 9000 Ghent Belgium

Identifiers

ISSN

0075-4277