Case Syncretism (Morphological Aspects of)

Case syncretism was one of the outcomes of two major moments of merging of different dialects: (a) the end of the Myc. period, with movements of peoples in the Aegean Sea, and (b) the unification of Greece and the dramatic reduction of dialectal variation shown by emergence of the Koine. The instrumental case was lost at stage (a), while the dative case was lost at stage (b). Case syncretism affected cases with low frequency, and a relatively high number of allomorphs (Luraghi 2004)