The Old Persian genitive. A study of a syncretic case

Old Persian does not have separate forms for genitive and dative, but formerly distinct grammatical categories merged into the genitive case. The aim of our paper is to analyse this change. To this effect, in the first part we investigate the syntactic functions and the semantic roles of the Old Persian genitive case. A careful analysis of textual data reveals that, when the genitive is an adnominal modifier, its functions and roles are those typical of this case in a cross-linguistic perspective. However, when the genitive is a clause constituent, its functional range includes a broad spectrum of other functions and roles, such as Recipient, Addressee or Benefactive. According to the results of our analysis this range of functions and roles can be accounted for if we consider the Old Persian genitive case as a polysemic category, having the expression of the Possessor as the core function. On the other hand, attested functions untypical of the genitive can best be interpreted as radial and metaphorical extensions from the nuclear meaning of the Possessor. Following on this analysis, the second part of the paper is devoted to diachronic considerations. The study of the Old Persian material makes it possible to demonstrate that the decay of the dative is not due to phonological changes or to the progressive silencing of post-tonal syllables. On the other hand, in a comparative perspective, we can observe that in Avestan as well, the productivity of the genitive as a verb argument gradually increases at the expense of the dative, causing non-productive dative constructions to fall into disuse in Young Avestan. These and other pieces of evidence suggest that the semantic or functional overlapping of whole argument structures is the cause of the Old Persian genitive-dative syncretism. It is well-known that languages have a tendency to eliminate synonymous grammatical forms over time: morphological case distinctions disappear - as we attempt here to show for Old Persian - with a subsequent merging of the argument structure constructions.