Pre-Greek languages

[Sean Crist]

On Thu, 30 Sep 1999 X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

> But this is precisely the same objection that was made to Linear B as Greek.
> And as you observe it is the common reason given for the difficulty in making
> out the nuances of Mycenean as it appears in Linear B: <<Linear B is actually
> a very bad script for representing Greek; it doesn't represent the
> distinction between voiceless, voiceless aspirated, and voiced stops.>>

> Just as Linear B might be bad for Greek, Linear A might be worse.  But that
> definitely does not mean it is not Greek.  And the term "designed for a
> language" assumes something about the skill and purpose of scribes who were
> matching symbols to meanings and perhaps sounds when writing technology was
> primitive to say the least.

OK, then, why can't we read it if it's Greek?  Linear A and Linear B have
many of the same characters.  If both are Greek, the only way this could
have happened would be if the scribes at some point decided to keep the
same characters, but give them all new values, much as if we decided that
starting tomorrow, we're going to start using the letter <f> to represent
[a], etc. I can't think of any other case in history where such a thing
has happened; it's hard to see why anyone would do such a thing.

Also, as I already said, based on the distribution of the characters in
the Linear A writings, it looks like the Linear A languages doesn't
inflect by adding suffixes to the end of the word.  How can it possibly be
Greek, then?

> <<If the sound values in Linear B are any indication, it appears that an
> extemely large number of the Linear A words end in -u, whatever this means
> (in any case, it isn't what you generally find in IE languages).>>

> As you note this is evidence but not conclusive.  A shift in vowel sounds
> (e.g., from -u to -i or -oi) that might have prompted the change from A to B
> would actually work the other way.

But we know that no such change happened in pre-Greek.  Attested Greek
[oi] generally represents PIE *oy, etc.; _not_ earlier *-u.

> It is also another thing to muddy the waters with a certainty we simply don't
> have.  This was the cardinal sin that happened with Linear B and it seems
> that we haven't learned our lesson yet.

If Linear A ends up being deciphered and turns out to be Greek, I'll say
that I was wrong and will change my view.  I don't know where you keep
getting this 'certainty' business; you're attributing a certainty to me
which I don't hold and which I never voiced. I'm simply correctly
reporting that based on our current state of knowledge, Linear A does not
appear to be Greek.

> Too much certainty about the
> ancioent past is probably a bad thing:

> <<In 1949 Ventris had sent out a questionnaire on Linear B to over 40 leading
> authorities on Aegean questions (including archaeologists, linguists and
> historians); he privately distributed the replies in 1950 as The Languages of
> the Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations (known as the "Mid-Century Report").>>
> Not even one suggested that the texts might be in Greek.

> But most were CERTAIN it wasn't.

Yes; and when a convincing case turned up that they were wrong, nearly all
scholars in the area changed their views accordingly.  This is how
scholarly study progresses; there's no shame in the fact that the field
was once wrong on this question.

  \/ __ __    _\_     --Sean Crist  (kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu)
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