On the Meanings of the Place names in Genitive in Mycenaean Greek

Abstract

The issue of the syncretism of genitive with ablative in Mycenaean Greek became a subject of discussion upon the decipherment of the Linear B in the 1960's, mainly because of the occurrence of the instrumental ending -φι in place names in contexts where one would expect a local case. Fifty-five years after the publishing of Petar Hr. Ilievski's book The Ablative, Instrumental and Locative in the Oldest Greek Texts, we revisit this problem with an analysis of the meanings of the place names in genitive in Mycenaean Greek. In view of the significance of the place names, as a semantic category for the local cases on one hand, and the frequent use of the place names in the Mycenaean documents on the other, such an analysis can provide important information regarding the thesis that the ablative in the Mycenaean period of the Greek language was not expressed with genitive forms.