Case Marking from Old Iranian to Ossetic: A Comparative and Typological Approach

It has been claimed that the Iranian dialects ancestral to Ossetic passed through a stage in which the Old Iranian case system had been reduced to a two‐way opposition of the type found in many other Middle and Modern Iranian languages. An opposing view holds that the extent of syncretism was more limited, and that Ossetic inherited at least four cases. Reexamination of the evidence demonstrates that although reflexes of up to five OIr. cases may be identified, pre‐Ossetic contrasted just two cases (direct vs. oblique) in lexical nouns and three in pronouns. Most of the secondary cases arose from postpositional phrases, as is crosslinguistically common, but other grammaticalisation paths have played a role, including a postposed pronoun and pattern copying of a lexically restricted denominal suffix. Contrary to widespread claims, although linguistic contacts surely characterised all stages of Ossetic, neither the shift from cumulative to separative exponence of case and number, nor reduction and subsequent expansion of the case system need be ascribed to the effects of nonnative language acquisition.