Simplification of case morphology in Koine Greek; Evidence from the private letters from Mons Claudianus

Abstract

In this paper, I study the language of the private letters (nos. 137-75, 177-9, 220- 303 as published by Bingen et al. 1992, 1997) written between c. 110-160 AD at Mons Claudianus in the Eastern desert of Egypt. These non-literary texts show live evidence for the restructuring of the case system of Greek known to have taken place between the late Koine period and the early Mediaeval period. In particular, they show advanced ways in which fixity of word order is taking over from morphological marking as a means of expressing linguistic relationships.