Ricerc@Sapienza

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, δοτικὴ πτῶσις. 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.