Variation and change in the formal marking of Khotanese (II). The genitive-dative singular and related problems in Late Khotanese

In the transition from Old to Late Khotanese, several modifications took place which deeply modified the structure of the language. The substantial phonological changes that affected Late Khotanese word-finally had an obvious impact on morphology and syntax. Building on my previous study on variation and change in the formal marking of the genitive-dative singular in Old Khotanese (Del Tomba 2022), the aim of the present article is to analyse the development of the genitivedative singular endings in a selection of Late Khotanese texts. Although the a- and aa-declensions constitute the main focus of the article, other inflectional types are also considered in order to make preliminary suggestions as to the linguistic drift undergone by Late Khotanese from the synthetic to the analytic type.