Pre-Greek languages

[Nikos Sarantakos]

At 10:33 27/09/99 +0100, Larry Trask wrote:
>On Sun, 26 Sep 1999, Nikos Sarantakos wrote:

>[on a recent suggestion that Linear A conceals Greek]

>> It is easy to dismiss all that as nationalistic or plain ravings,
>> but I for one would want to hear more. In fact, my gut feeling
>> (totally unscientific) is that Linear A is most probably Greek. With
>> the (enormous) benefit of hindsight, it seems to me preposterously
>> nearsighted that all the scientific community before Ventrys (and
>> Ventrys himself, almost up to the end) refused to consider the
>> hypothesis of Linear B being Greek.

>True, but Ventris was eventually forced into this conclusion by his
>data.  This is a striking case of the data forcing an investigator into
>a conclusion he was never interested in reaching.  This fact alone sets
>Ventris's work apart from the numerous cases of eager decipherers
>"finding" what they always wanted to find.

>Anyway, it is an overstatement to say that "all the scientific
>community before Ventris" refused to consider the possibility that
>Linear B was Greek.  There were always a number of archaeologists who
>favored the view that Linear B was Greek.  Most prominent here was the
>Briton A. J. B. Wace, who actively defended the idea.  And Carl Blegen's
>discovery of Linear B tablets on the Greek mainland encouraged this view
>in archaeological quarters.

>Much of the trouble seems to have stemmed from the views of Sir Arthur
>Evans, who, for his own reasons, didn't want to find Greeks in Bronze
>Age Crete.  He was extremely hostile to the interpretation of Linear B
>as Greek, and he used all of his considerable influence to oppose it.
>I have read that Evans persecuted Wace to such a degree that Wace was
>forced out of Greek archaeology altogether.  Evans also, I'm told, made
>every effort to restrict access to the Linear B tablets to the circle of
>those who agreed with him that Linear B could not be Greek.  Those with
>a different view simply could not get access to the Cretan materials.
>Accordingly, it was only after Evans's death in 1941 that it finally
>became possible for other scholars to examine the tablets, leading to
>Kober's work in the 1940s and then Ventris's in the early 1950s.

Very well described. It is striking how an amateur (following scientific
methods at least in the case of Ventrys)
was correct where scientists failed -this is also the case
with Schliemann. Also with Kalokairinos, the merchant who found
Knossos -but could not excavate there because Crete was under
Ottoman rule.

>As for Linear A, my very scanty knowledge of it suggests that it lacks
>the kind of sets identified in Linear B by Alice Kober before Ventris's
>work, the sets which proved to represent different inflected forms of
>single words or names.  Anybody know anything definite about this?
>If this is correct, then it militates against any identification of
>Linear A as Greek, or perhaps as any language inflected in the typical
>IE fashion.

>> But if we assume Linear B is Greek (and I believe this is considered
>> proven),

>That's certainly my impression!

>> it becomes rather self-evident that Linear A is also Greek.

>Why "self-evident"?  I'm afraid I don't follow.

>Why should the Greeks use Linear A to write their language for a while,
>and then abruptly replace it with the rather different Linear B, a
>system of the same general kind?  Writing systems are notoriously
>conservative, and users are typically reluctant to make even the most
>obvious and necessary changes.

>Surely the "self-evident" view is the one that seems to be most widely
>accepted.  The Greeks reached the Aegean, found a people already there
>speaking an alien language and writing it in Linear A.  They took over
>this writing system, but found it excessively awkward for writing their
>own language, so they modified it to make it more suitable, and the
>result was Linear B.

I would also term it the "generally accepted" view. Mind you, the generally
accepted view before Ventris was that Linear B was non-Greek. So,
I feel entitled to have my (unfounded) reserves. For one thing, Linear
B is still considered exceedingly awkward for Greek (see previous post
of JSimeon). So, either the
doubters of Ventris (there are some, I trust) are right, and neither
L.A and L.B are Greek (I find this coherent), or those who did use
Linear script for Greek were perhaps not finding it so awkward
as we now, 3500 years after, consider it.

Nikos Sarantakos

PS In any case, the material in Linear A is too scant; but perhaps
something more will be found in the future; by the way, have there
been found Linear A specimens in mainland Greece?