Between philosophy and grammar: Tullio De Mauro’s investigations of cases in the ancient Greek language / Tra filosofia e grammatica. Gli studi di Tullio De Mauro sui casi in greco antico

The article highlights the contribution of Tullio De Mauro to explain both the original function of accusative in Indo-European and Greek and the meaning of the Greek name of dative, dotike ptosis. Methodology is particularly remarkable, as De Mauro takes advantage of statistical and probabilistic means, a very innovative analysis as to the Sixties of last century. Some of the results attained by De Mauro are still tenable up to now.