Results found: 2

Search results

Search:
in the keywords: case syncretism

Sort By:

Limit search:

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

100%

Stolk J. V.

The Journal of Juristic Papyrology

2015

issue 45

255-290

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.

The phonological basis of Latin case patterns

84%

Emonds J. E.

Topics in Linguistics

2014

vol. 14

issue 1

48-68

This study focuses on accounting for allomorphy in Latin case/number inflection. It attributes essentially all of it to the influence of adjacent features of standard segmental phonology on morphemes expressing case assignment. Indeed, other languages lead linguists to expect that allomorphy at a stem-suffix border can depend on any feature of a final vowel: ±Low, ±High, ±Round, ±Back, ±Consonantal or ±Syllabic. Empirically, it turns out that no two Latin stem-final vowels induce identical allomorphy in case/number suffixes, nor the same allomorphy as final consonants. Moreover, some (not much) phonologically conditioned allomorphy is phonetically opaque. These two factors have led traditional scholarship to conclude that each stem-final segment should define a separate classification of noun suffixation or “declension”. As there are basically six types of final segment (a, o, u, i, e and consonants), each then gives rise to a different declension (stems with final i are often put in some other group or considered irregular), thus creating five (or six) declensions. Tradition then goes on to analyse stem-final vowels not as part of stems but as some kind of separate morphemes called “thematic vowels” (with no role in either syntax or phonology). This essay argues rather that an unflinching modern and formal approach to inflectional allomorphy, exactly analogous to using phonology to reduce regular English plurals to a single lexical form, succeeds in sweeping away the sandcastle of Latin declensions and better captures the actual descriptive generalizations that account for Latin case inflection.

Refine search results

1 The Journal of Juristic Papyrology

1 Topics in Linguistics

1 Emonds J. E.

1 Stolk J. V.

1 2015

1 2014

Search results

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

The phonological basis of Latin case patterns