Case (including Syncretism)

‘Case’ can be defined as a grammatical category encoding the syntactic functions and/or the semantic roles of a given noun within a clause or phrase. The term also refers to the specific values that constitute the category of ‘case’, as well as to their formal expression. In accordance with this definition, Ancient Greek is classified as a case language whose system comprises five cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive and dative) encoded by specific case markers. This is a simplification of the eight-case system generally reconstructed for PIE, and was the result of various syncretic processes which occurred in different periods of Greek. This article is devoted to the notions of case, syncretism and related issues, paying particular attention to semantic and syntactic aspects. Furthermore, it briefly reviews the syncretic processes which occurred in Greek and schematically surveys the chief syntactic functions and semantic uses of cases in Ancient Greek.