Dative by genitive replacement in the Greek language of the papyri: a diachronic account of case semantics

Semantic analysis of the prenominal first person singular genitive pronoun (μου) in the Greek of the documentary papyri shows that the pronoun is typically found in the position between a verbal form and an alienable possessum which functions as the patient of the predicate. When the event expressed by the predicate is patient-affecting, the possessor is indirectly also affected. Hence the semantic role of this affected alienable possessor might be interpreted as a benefactive or malefactive in genitive possession constructions. By semantic extension the meaning of the genitive case in this position is extended into goal-oriented roles, such as addressee and recipient, which are commonly denoted by the dative case in Ancient Greek. The semantic similarity of the genitive and dative cases in these constructions might have provided the basis for the merger of the cases in the Greek language

Linguistic variation in Greek papyri: towards a new tool for quantitative study

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Post-Classical Greek from a scribal perspective : variation and change in contemporary orthographic norms in documentary papyri

Spelling deviations are often considered to be the result of random variation or plain mistakes by the scribes. Based on the examples in this paper, I argue that some of the apparent deviations may actually be in accordance with contemporary norms. Close study of the spelling of five lexemes in the corpus of documentary papyri shows that the orthographic conventions at the time may have been different than suggested by contemporary grammarians and modern editors

Dative for accusative case interchange in epistolary formulas in Greek papyrus letters

Greek papyrus letters preserve not only instances of the replacement of the dative case; they also show the use of the dative instead of the accusative case as direct object and disjoint infinitival subject. This interchange is mostly found in epistolary phrases, namely the salutation formula (ἀσπάζομαί σε) and the initial (εὔχομαί σε ὑγιαίνειν) and final (ἐρρῶσθαί σε εὔχομαι) health wishes. The phonetic similarity of the pronouns might have created the circumstances for case confusion. Contamination of the constructions reflects the difficulties of the scribes to construct conservative epistolary phrases and, thereby, diachronic phraseological variation might reflect language change. In salutation formulas, the use of a dative Addressee could be explained by analogical overextension from the category of communication verbs taking a dative complement. The decline of the accusative and infinitive construction might be one of the reasons why the accusative disjoint infinitival subject is replaced by the dative case in health wishes

A Byzantine business letter and account from the collection of the Oslo University Library

This Byzantine papyrus from Aphrodite preserves the middle part of a business letter on the recto and the address on the verso. The letter concerns an estate of the monastery of Apa Sourous. The verso contains an account of expenses which connects the papyrus to the well-known archive of Dioscorus

Review of Nicola Reggiani, Digital Papyrology I: Methods, Tools and Trends.

Papyrology has always been at the forefront of digital humanities and this monograph is no exception to this practice. The book under review is one of the outcomes of the European Research Council (ERC)-project “Online Humanities Scholarship: A Digital Medical Library Based on Ancient Texts” (DIGMEDTEXT), led by the late Isabella Andorlini. It provides an overview of the development of electronic resources in papyrological research from the sixties until today, analysing a wide range of digital practices in the study of (mainly) Greek and Latin literary, paraliterary and documentary papyri