I just finished reading the first chapter of Scott Grimm’s masters thesis, “The Lattice of Case and Agentivity,” and I’m looking forward to the rest of it!
Grimm shows a very clear grasp of the issues at stake and the limitations of several current linguistic theories. While recognizing the contributions of advances in both syntax and semantics in clarifying our understanding of Case in a number of languages, he also gives a concise presentation of the questions remaining to be answered—mainly the relationship of the oblique cases to syntax and semantics. If his analysis in the remaining chapters is equally lucid, we will have much to gain from reading it.
While it is not his primary objective to resolve the issue of case attraction in Hellenistic Greek, he does address it and propose a new way of understanding the phenomenon. I have not yet read that part, but I’m looking forward to it!
You can download the entire thesis for free.
You can also download his more recent article, “Case Attraction in Ancient Greek.” I’ll start reading that too soon!