Competing grammars and language change: evidence from correction and revision processes in the private papyri from Ptolemaic Egypt

In view of the variation they present and their connection with the contemporary language, documentary papyri from Egypt represent a valuable source for a sociolinguistics of Ancient Greek. This paper explores the heuristic potential of the traces of authorial corrections and textual revisions for the study of individual repertoires. Two cases of phrasal corrections, taken from a corpus of Ptolemaic papyri, are discussed: both can be traced back to the gradual restructuring of the system of Classical complement sentences. They offer an interesting perspective on language change, since the formulations and re-formulations of the writers reveal the grammars that competed within the speakers’ competence, providing glimpses into the dynamic relationship between synchronic variability and diachronic evolution.