Pre-Greek languages

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Crist <kurisuto at unagi.cis.upenn.edu>
Date: Thursday, September 30, 1999 3:51 PM

>Actually, we can say with pretty fair certainty that Linear A is not Greek
>nor any other Indo-European language.

>First of all, the script appears to be designed for a language with a much
>simpler syllable structure than that of the Indo-European languages.  The
>best guess is that Linear A represents a language whose syllables were
>something like the type of modern Japanese or Hawaiian, i.e. mostly
>CV-type syllables, unlike IE which allows very complex onsets and codas
>(e.g. English "splints", where one syllable has the structure CCCVCCC).

>It seems that what happened was something like this: when the pre-Greeks
>invaded the areas where Linear A was used, they adapted the existing
>script for their own use.  Linear B is actually a very bad script for
>representing Greek; it doesn't represent the distinction between
>voiceless, voiceless aspirated, and voiced stops. It also doesn't
>represent syllable codas at all, and it has to break up complex syllable
>onsets and represent them by inserting dummy vowels.  It's much as if you
>wrote English using the katakana syllabary of Japanese; you can do it, but
>the results are not ideal.

[Ed Selleslagh]

I like the comparison (BTW, is Kirisuto such a transcription of Crist?). Closer
to home: Iberian semi-syllabic script was used for (IE) Celtiberian, with the
same problems, and more, like the excess number of sibilants (Cf. Basque) and
rhotics, e.g. Iberian - still not understood in any normal sense, very much
less than e.g. Etruscan - fits most, if not all, of the requirements for being
written correctly by means of Linear A. And so does - presumably, if the
reconstructions are right - Proto-Basque.

There are a few striking resemblances (e.g. both are agglutinating, and
apparently share some roots and affixes) between Iberian and Basque/Aquitanian
but the two languages do not seem - for the time being - to be 'genetically'
related. Probably some form of interpenetration.  BUT: Iberian is notorious for
its many 'translators' - who totally contradict eachother. I tried my hand at a
funeral stela, with a plausible but unproven result, but most other texts
remain totally cryptic, except for the few segments that look like Basque.

>Based on a rigorous analysis of the small Linear A corpus, it appears that
>Linear A doesn't inflect the way that the Indo-European languages do, i.e.
>with complex inflectional suffixes (David Packard, 1974).  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).

[Ed]

There is at least one Iberian text that has this characteristic ("ekarriu
atuniu botuei baiteski ekusu sosinbiurru borrberroniu kosoiu baiteski...",
where various consonants may be voiced or not, affricated or not, etc.). The
meaning of the sentence and the morph -u are unknown, not even guessed.  Some
segments look Basque, like 'ekarri/egarri', biurr-', 'berr-', 'gozo-(?)'.

>It's too bad that nationalist sentiment muddies the waters so badly.  I
>hadn't heard before that some modern Greeks believe that Greek is
>indigenous to Greece and is the ancestor of all the IE languages, but I'm
>not surprised; similar claims have been made for Germanic, Lithuanian, etc.

>One other caution I'd make is that for any undeciphered script, you can
>find any number claims that the writings have been deciphered, with each
>interpretation  more fanciful than the next.  You have to be very critical
>of these claims, because they are rarely backed up with any solid
>arguments.  Undeciphered texts attract crackpots like a flame attracts
>moths.  This doesn't mean that we won't ever succeed in deciphering
>A, but it's just another thing to muddy the waters further.

[Ed]

True.  Paul Arnold thought Linear A was Proto-Basque, but he used a number of
non-ancient words to translate the texts.

At the risk of being called a crackpot myself (at times, somebody has to stick
out his neck), I think he may have stumbled on something, but it could rather
be some leftover of an Iberian migration, or something in the realm of
Venneman's 'Vasconic'.

On the other hand, there are the 'eteo-cretan' stelas in Greek script.
Unfortunately, they seem to be in at least two different languages - none of
them understood. P. Arnold used the one called by some 'Nomos'
(onadesiemetepimitsphado....., with no word separations), apparently referring
to Praisos, near the place where it was found, and with more than one, possibly
Greek, case ending. The text is from a time when Greek was already established
in Crete, and probably had had some impact on the local language. One would
strongly suspect that the Linear A texts represent one of these languages, at
an earlier stage.

I don't know what the present situation is in this respect, and would welcome
some information, not necessarily via this forum.

Finally: Don't shoot me: I'm just launching some ideas.

Ed.

Dr. Ir. Eduard Selleslagh edsel at glo.be
B-9120 Haasdonk
Belgium