Dative and genitive case interchange in Greek papyri from Roman-Byzantine Egypt

Abstract

Abstract Examples of case interchange in Greek papyri are often used to illustrate the start of dative case syncretism in Greek (Humbert 1930; Browning 1983; Horrocks 2010). On the other hand, case interchange can be caused by Egyptian scribes having difficulties with the Greek case system (Clarysse 1993; Vierros 2012). In this article, I combine quantitative analysis of the dative and genitive case interchanges in Greek documentary papyri with a qualitative examination of the social and linguistic contexts of the interchanges. This shows that whereas the usage of the dative instead of the genitive pronoun as adnominal possessor may be explained by indirect bilingual interference and scribal confusion, the replacement of the dative by the genitive as a third argument of a verb may have been caused by interference from the Greek spoken language in the writing of less educated scribes.