Linear A Nouns: ultimate o: Masculine/neuter nouns and adjectives:KEY: OM = Old Minoan, Minoan substratum NM = New Minoan, Mycenaean-derived superstratum PGS = pre-Greek substratum Since this list is intended merely to be indicative of what appears to be the Minoan ultimate o for masculine and neuter nouns and adjectives, with a few exceptions intended to be illustrative, I have not defined any of the words here. They will be defined in our Complete Glossary of Minoan Vocabulary, consisting of over 950 words. adaro NM = a type of grain, barley amidao apero aruqaro asidatoi (pl.?) 5 dinaro ero NM jako jateo kairo 10 NM = due measure kero kidaro kiro NM kiso kito 15 kuro NM = reaching, attaining, i.e. total meto mio muko NM = corner, recess murito 20 niro Paito PGS = Phaistos (= Linear B) pa3dipo potokuro NM = a full drink, a brimming drink puko 25 OM = tripd qajo qareto qato qero 30 reqasuo roiko NM = broken (= Linear B) ruiko Cf. roiko Rukito PGS = Lykinthos (= Linear B, Rukito) ruko 35 sapo sato sezanitao simito PGS = mouse, attribute of Apollo, the Mouse God siro NM? 40 tero tio uro uso utaro 45 witero 46
Tag Archive: nouns
Minoan Grammar: Nouns & adjectives: Masculine: ultimate u, nominative masculine singular: Part 2: D-Z depu-tanirizu 86-150depu kopu kumapu matapu nisupu 90 qepu ra2pu rapu sasupu sokanipu 95 supu adaru akaru atiru dideru = emmer wheat 100 dimaru diru ditajaru jaru kaporu 105 karu kasaru kekiru kiru koiru NM 110 koru NM maru miru muru naru 115 nazuru niru padaru qaqaru ra2ru 120 saru setamaru saru siru tamaru terusi(declension) 125 dusu kunisu = emmer wheat usu zusu siitau 130 aratu kisusetu majutu mesenerutu nutu 135 rera2tusi (declined) ripatu sarutu semetu senu 140 sezatimitu sitetu sutu juu duzu 140 kupazu manarizu mazu nazuku nasuru 145 pikuzu pu2juzu radizu suzu tanirizu 150
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Minoan Grammar: Nouns & adjectives: Masculine: ultimate u, nominative masculine singular: Part 1: A adu-winu 1-85
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Gretchen Leonhardt is up against some stiff competition from Urii Mosenkis concerning her so-called proto-Japanese origins of Minoan Linear A: Urii Mosenkis makes a very strong case for Minoan Linear A being proto-Greek, and he does it over and over, like clockwork. This includes his own completely different interpretation of Ms. Leonhardt’s highly contentious decipherment of kuro as so called proto-Japanese. I strongly suggest that Ms. Leonhardt read his articles. He is much more qualified than I am in Linear A (and, I contend, than Ms. Leonhardt as well), and I admit it without a shadow of hesitation. I am forced to revise my predictions about the partial decipherment of Minoan Linear A as I outlined them in my first article on Linear A, and I admit openly that Mosenkis is probably right, by and large. Ms. Leonhardt would do well to read all of his articles, as they flat-out contradict everything she claims about the so-called proto-Japanese origins of the Minoan language. I at least have the humility to lay down my cards when I am confronted with convincing evidence to the effect that my own partial decipherment of Minoan Linear A is defective, even though I have already reached many of the same conclusions as Mosenkis. Not that he would ever convince Ms. Leonhardt of the infallibility of her own dubious decipherments of Linear A tablets. I have a very great deal more to say about Ms. Leonhardt’s contentious claims to eventual fame with respect to her clearly flawed interpretations of Linear A tablets, and to drive my points home, I shall have occasion to cite Mosenkis whenever and wherever he contradicts her, and that is always. To view all of Mosenkis’ superbly conceived research papers, please visit his academia.edu account here:Here is a selective electronic bibliography of the highly qualified decipherments Mosenkis has made of several Minoan Linear A inscriptions: Electronic: Mosenkis, Urii. Flourishing of the Minoan Greek State in the Linear A Script 1700 – 14560 BCE. https://www.academia.edu/28708342/FLOURISHING_OF_THE_MINOAN_GREEK_STATE_IN_THE_LINEAR_A_SCRIPT_1700_1450_BCE Mosenkis, Urii. Graeco-Macedonian goddess as Minoan city queen. https://www.academia.edu/26194521/Graeco-Macedonian_goddess_as_Minoan_city_queen Mosenkis,Urii. Linear A-Homeric quasi-bilingual https://www.academia.edu/16242940/Linear_A-Homeric_quasi-bilingual Mosenkis, Urii. ‘Minoan-Greek’ Dialect: Morphology https://www.academia.edu/28433292/MINOAN_GREEK_DIALECT_MORPHOLOGY Mosenkis, Urii. Minoan Greek Farming in Linear A. https://www.academia.edu/27669709/MINOAN_GREEK_FARMING_IN_LINEAR_A_Iurii_Mosenkis Mosenkis, Urii. Minoan Greek hypothesis: A short historiography https://www.academia.edu/27772316/Minoan_Greek_hypothesis_A_short_historiography Mosenkis, Urii. Minoan Greek phonetics and orthography in Linear A https://www.academia.edu/27866235/Minoan_Greek_phonetics_and_orthography_in_Linear_A Mosenkis, Urii. Minoan-Greek Society in Linear A. https://www.academia.edu/27687555/MINOAN_GREEK_SOCIETY_IN_LINEAR_A Mosenkis, Urii. Researchers of Greek Linear A. https://www.academia.edu/31443689/Researchers_of_Greek_Linear_A Mosenkis, Urii. Rhea the Mother of Health in the Arkalokhori Script https://www.academia.edu/31471809/Rhea_the_Mother_of_Health_in_the_Arkalokhori_Script PS I came to almost exactly the same conclusions as Mosenkis re. this inscription, although my Greek translation is different. I wonder what Ms. Leonhardt has to say for herself in light of so many astonishingly insightful decipherments by Urii Mosenkis of a large number of Linear A tablets. I look forward to cogent and rational counter arguments on her part, which stand up to rigorous scientific criteria.
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KEY POST! The truly formidable obstacles facing us in even a partial decipherment of Minoan Linear A: Any attempt, however concerted, at even a partial decipherment of Minoan Linear A is bound to meet with tremendous obstacles, as illustrated all too dramatically by this table:These obstacles include, but are not prescribed by: 1. The fact that there are far fewer extant Minoan Linear A tablets and fragments, of which the vast majority are mere fragments (no more than 500), most of them un intelligible, than there are extant tablets and fragments in Mycenaean Linear B (well in excess of 4,500), of which the latter are mostly legible, even the fragments. 2. The fact that Mycenaean Linear B has been completely deciphered, first by Michael Ventris in 1952 and secondly, by myself in closing the last gap in the decipherment of Mycenaean Linear B, namely, the decipherment of supersyllabograms in my article, “The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Linear B”, in the illustrious international archaeological annual, Archaeology and Science, ISSN 1452-7448, Vol. 11 (2015), pp. 73-108, here:
This final stage in the decipherment of Mycenaean Linear B has effectively brought closure to its decipherment. As illustrated all too conspicuously by this table of apparent roots/stems and/or prefixes of Minoan Linear A lexemes and their lemmas, we are still a long way off from being able to convincingly decipher Minoan Linear A. At the categorical sub-levels of the syntax and semiotics of Minoan Linear A, we cannot even begin to determine which categories to isolate, let alone what these categories are. Allow me to illustrate in discriminative terms: 3. As the table of Minoan Linear A so-called roots & stems + prefixes above all too amply highlights, we cannot even tell which first syllable or which of the first 2 syllables of any of the Minoan Linear A words in this list is/are either (a) roots or stems of the Minoan Linear A lexemes or lemmas which it/they initiate or (b) prefixes of them, even if I have tentatively identified some as the former and some as the latter (See the table). 4. In the case of roots or stems, which ones are roots and which are stems? What is the difference between the two in Minoan Linear A? Let us take a couple of entries as examples to illustrate my point: 4.1 The 3 words beginning with the apparent root or stem asi, (I cannot tell which is which), the first 2 syllables of asidatoi, asijaka & asikira may not even be roots or stems of these words at all, but prefixes of 3 probably unrelated words instead. Who is to know? 4.2 If asidatoi, asijaka & asikira are either nouns or adjectives, what is the gender and number of each one? To say the very least, it is rash to assume that asidatoi is plural, just because it looks like an ancient Greek masculine plural (as for example in Mycenaean Linear B teoi (gods) or masculine plurals in any other ancient Greek dialect for that matter, since that assumption is based on the most likely untenable hypothesis that Minoan Linear A is some form of proto-Greek, in spite of the fact that several current linguistic researchers into Minoan Linear A believe precisely that. The operative word is “believe”, since absolutely no convincing circumstantial evidence has ever come to the fore that Minoan Linear A is some form of proto-Greek. 4.3 The conclusion which I have drawn here, that Minoan Linear A may not be proto-Greek, arises from the fact that almost all of the Minoan words in this table bear little or no resemblance at all even to Mycenaean Greek. 4.5 But there clearly exceptions to the previous hypothesis, these being words such as depa and depu, of which the former is a perfect match with the Homeric, depa, meaning “a cup”. On the other hand, depu is less certain. However, in my preliminary tentative decipherment of 107 Minoan Linear A words (which are to appear in my article to be published in Vol. 12 of Archaeology and Science, 2017-2018), I have come to the tentative conclusion that the ultimate u in almost all Minoan Linear A words is quite likely to be a macro designator. If this were so, depu would be larger than depa. So a translation along the lines of [2] “a large cup” or “a libation cup” might be in order. Still, I could be dead wrong in this assumption. 4.6 However, the lexeme depa does appear to reveal one probable characteristic of Minoan Linear A grammar, that the ultimate for the feminine singular may very well be a, as in so many other languages, ancient or modern (let alone Greek). If that is the case, then words such as asijaka, asikira, keta, kipa, saja, sina and tamia may possibly all be feminine singular... that is to say, if any, some or even all of them are either nouns or adjectives, clearly a point of contention in and of itself. Who are we to say that one or more of these words may instead be adverbs or some person, singular or plural, of some conjugation in some tense or mood of some Minoan Linear A verb? On the other hand, at least one or more or even most of these words and the other words in this table ending in a may be nouns or adjectives in the feminine singular. But one again, who can say at all for sure? 4.7 If the ultimate u is supposed to be a macro designator, how then are we to account for the fact that [3] maruku, which very much looks like a (declensional) variant of maru, means “made of wool”, which itself has nothing whatsoever to do with a macro designator, if at the same time the apparent lexeme maru actually does mean “wool”? After all, one might conclude, maru looks a lot like Mycenaean Linear B mari or mare, which as everyone knows, does mean “wool”. But it is just as likely as not that the assumption that maru means “wool”, and its variants maruku “made of wool” ? (a guess at best) and maruri = “with wool” have nothing whatsoever to do with wool in Minoan Linear A. 4.8 In fact, the hypothesis that maruri = “with wool” is based on yet another assumption, namely, that the termination ri is dative singular, similar to the commonplace dative singular oi, ai or i in Mycenaean Linear B. But if that is the case, this implies that Minoan Linear A is probably proto-Greek, for which there is no substantive evidence whatsoever. So we wind up mired in a flat out contradiction in terms, in other words, an inescapable paradox. 4.9a Next, taking all of the words beginning with the root or stem? - or prefix? sina [4], what on earth are we to make of so many variants? Perhaps this is a conjugation of some verb in some tense or mood. If that is the case, we should expect 6 variations, first, second and third persons singular and plural. Or should we? What about the possible existence of the dual in Minoan Linear A? But here again we find ourselves smack up against the assumption we have just made in 4.5, 4.6, 4.7 & 4.8, that the putative Minoan verb beginning with the so-called root or stem sina is itself proto-Greek. But I have to ask out loud, are you aware of any verb in ancient Greek which begins with the root or stem sina? Well, according to Liddell & Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, there are in fact 2, which I have Latinized here for ease of access to those of you who cannot read Greek, and these are, (1) sinamoreo (infinitive sinamorein), which means “to damage wantonly” and (2) sinomai, “to plunder, spoil or pillage”. The problem is that neither of these ancient Greek verbs bears any resemblance to or corresponds in any conceivable way with the 7 Minoan Linear A variants post-fixed to sina. So I repeat, for the sake of emphasis, are these 7 all variants on some Minoan Linear A verb or are they not? 4.9b What if on the other hand, all 7 of these variants post-fixed to sina are instead a declension of some Minoan noun or adjective in Linear A? It is certainly conceivable that there are 7 cases in the Minoan language, in view of the fact that plenty of ancient and modern languages have 7 cases or more. Latin has six: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative and vocative. But ancient Greek has only 5, nominative, genitive, dative and accusative and vocative, the ablative absolute (which occurs in Latin) subsumed under the genitive absolute. From this perspective, it would appear quite unlikely that the 7 Minoan Linear A variants on sina are proto-Greek declensions, especially in light of the fact that, once again, none of them bears any resemblance to the ancient Greek, sinapi = “mustard”, sinion = “sieve” or sinos = “hurt, harm, mischief, damage” (nominative). 5. Moving on to taniria and tanirizui [5], we could of course once again draw the (most likely untenable) conclusion if taniria is a feminine singular noun, then tanirizui must be/is dative singular, following the template for the dative singular in Mycenaean Linear B (i, ai or oi). But once again, there is no word in ancient Greek bearing any resemblance to these critters. And once again, even if Minoan Linear A had a dative singular, why on earth would it have to end in i? 6. However, when we come to the 4 words reza, adureza, kireza and tireza, we are confronted with another phenomenon. 3 of these 4 words (adureza, kireza and tireza) each in turn apparently are prefixed by adu, ki and ti. Makes sense at first sight. However, once again, appearances can be terribly deceiving. Nevertheless, in my preliminary decipherment of Minoan Linear A, I have drawn the tentative conclusion that all four of these words are intimately interconnected. And in the actual context of the few extant Minoan Linear A tablets and fragments in which these 4 terms appear, it very much looks as if they are all terms of measurement. But you will have to await the publication of my article on the tentative decipherment of 107 Minoan Linear A words in Vol. 12 (2017-2018) of Archaeology and Science to discover how I came to this conclusion. 7. Notwithstanding the fact that almost all of the words in this highly selective table of Minoan Linear A lexemes and lemmas (whichever ones are which), with the exception of depa and depu, as well as winu, which may be the Minoan Linear A equivalent of Mycenaean Linear B woino = “wine”, appear not to be proto-Greek, that does not imply that at least a few or even some are in fact proto-Greek, based on this hypothesis: a number of words in Mycenaean Linear B, all of which appear to be proto-Greek, disappeared completely from later ancient Greek dialects. Among these we count a number of Mycenaean Greek words designating some kind of cloth, namely, pawea, pukatariya, tetukowoa and wehano [pg. 94, The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Linear B, in Archaeology and Science, Vol. 11 (2016)], plus several other Mycenaean Linear B words listed in the same article, which I do not repeat here due to space limitations. However, I must toss a wrench even into the assumption that the words designating some kinds of cloth (but which kinds we shall never know) are Mycenaean Linear B Greek or even proto-Greek, when they may not be at all! What if a few, some or all of them are in the pre-Greek substratum? If that is the case, are they Minoan, even if none of them appear on any extant Minoan Linear A tablet or fragment? Who is to say they are not? For instance, there is another so called Mycenaean or proto-Greek word, kidapa, which may very well mean “(ash) wood” or “a type of wood”, found only on Linear B tablet KN 894 N v 01. This word has a suspiciously Minoan ring to it. Just because it does not appear on any extant Minoan Linear A tablet or fragment does not necessarily imply that it is not Minoan or that it at least falls within the pre-Greek substratum. CONCLUSIONS: It must be glaringly obvious from all of the observations I have made on the Minoan Linear A terms in the table above that the more we try to make any sense of the syntactic and semiotic structure of the Minoan language in Linear A, the more and more mired we get in irresolvable contradictions in terms and paradoxes. Moreover, who is to say that the so-called proto-Greek words which surface in Minoan Linear A are proto-Greek at all, since they may instead be pre-Greek substratum words disguised as proto-Greek. We can take this hypothesis even further. Who is to say that the several so-called proto-Greek words we find in Mycenaean Greek, all of which disappeared completely from the ancient Greek lexicon in all Greek dialects after the fall of Mycenae ca. 1200 BCE, are also not proto-Greek but are instead in the pre-Greek substratum or even, if they fall into that substratum, that they are instead Minoan words or words of some other non Indo-European origin? We have landed in a real quagmire. So I find myself obliged to posit the hypothesis that, for the time being at least, any attempt at the putative decipherment of Minoan Linear A is inexorably bound to lead straight to a dead end. I challenge any philologists or linguist specializing in ancient languages to actually prove otherwise even with circumstantial evidence to the contrary.
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9 new Minoan Linear A words under U-WI, all of but 1 of which are probably of proto-Greek origin:
The 9 new Minoan Linear A words under U-WI are all probably of proto-Greek origin. As for those terms beginning with the syllabograms WA & WI, I have come to the conclusion that they all begin with digamma, meaning that digamma is even more common in Minoan Linear A than it is in Mycenaean Linear B. If we take into account that every last one of the Minoan Linear A words beginning with digamma would appear without digamma in Mycenaean Linear A, they all are equivalent to their Mycenaean Linear B and ancient Greek counterparts (the latter having dropped digamma for good). For instance, [3] TERA is almost certainly the ancient volcanic island of Thera, now Santorini, while [5] WAJA is equivalent to archaic Greek aia = earth, land and [7] WIJA is fem. pl. = arrows. The only word I have been unable to satisfactorily decipher is [6], of which I was able to decipher the first 2 syllabograms. You have to read the table to see my translation.
With this, we have come full circle to the end of our remarkable journey towards the decipherment of Minoan Linear A. Now that I have deciphered every last word I believe is of proto-Greek, proto-Hebrew, proto-Semitic or proto-Scythian origin, I have reached a cumulative grand TOTAL of 62 new Minoan Linear A words, expanding my original Minoan Linear A Glossary of 107 words = 21.5% of the total extant Linear B lexicon of 510 terms by my arbitrary count to a TOTAL = 169 words = 33 % of the total Minoan Linear A lexicon, which is exactly the sum and percentage I had predicted! This amounts to what is demonstrably a workable decipherment of the Minoan language, including of its grammar, which had evaded me before. Now all I have to do is to decipher as many of the 27 supersyllabograms in Minoan Linear A, beyond the 9 I have already deciphered. Now that I am armed with 62 new Minoan Linear A words, I am quite sure that I shall be able to decipher quite a few more of the supersyllabograms, and with that goal accomplished, I shall have effectively and once and for all deciphered the Minoan language.
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CRITICAL POST: What is Mycenaean Linear B progressive grammar & how do we derive it from attested (A) grammatical forms? We must first extrapolate as many elements of attested (A) grammar from extant Linear B tablets as we possibly can before even thinking of addressing Mycenaean Linear B derived (D) progressive grammar. I shall significantly expand this post in a new article soon to appear on my academia.edu account. Pardon the pun, but keep posted. This article, which is to serve as the formal introduction to derived (D) Mycenaean Linear B grammar, is bound to have a decisive impact on the Linear B research community. If this is not enough, just wait until researchers are confronted with the entire corpus of derived (D) Mycenaean Linear B grammar, which is much larger and more comprehensive than anyone can currently imagine, apart from myself. Since no one to date has ever assayed a relatively complete reconstruct of Mycenaean grammar, THAT will really hit home! The essays on derived (D) Mycenaean Linear B grammar will need to be subdivided by grammatical categories, verbs first, then nouns, etc., to prevent us from overwhelming our readers with the substantial mass of data we shall be covering. Before we can even pose the question, “What is Mycenaean Linear B derived (D) progressive grammar?”, we must account for any and all traces of Mycenaean grammar on the extant tablets. If we are to rely on the Mycenaean Linear B tablets, regardless of provenance, for signs of Mycenaean grammar, we are bound to be somewhat disappointed. Nevertheless, there remains on the Linear B tablets a corpus of Mycenaean grammar, considerably more substantial than we might have suspected, which is sufficiently viable for the reconstruction from the ground up of significant corpus of Mycenaean derived (D) grammar. In fact, the attributed (A) elements of Mycenaean grammar on extant Linear B tablets provide us with more than enough ammunition to reconstruct a wide spectrum of derived (D) Mycenaean grammar, as we shall soon see. From scanning through Chris Tselentis’ splendid Linear B Lexicon and other extant sources of Mycenaean Greek, I have been able to isolate the following snippets of extant, i.e. attributed (A), Mycenaean grammar. These I have categorized by the discrete grammatical categories with which we are all familiar. Synopsis: NOTE that I am resorting to Prof. L.R. Palmer’s convention of LATINIZING all Linear B syllabograms, hence, words and phrases, since listing as many Mycenaean Linear B as I have even for attested (A) grammatical forms is a very tedious process not worth my trouble, let alone anyone else’s. However, I am providing in this post a few examples of actual attested (A) Linear B words, along with the complete derived (D) conjugation of didomi (I give), derived from the attested (A) didosi (they give) below. Here is the conjugation in the present active tense of the athematic verb didomi, fully restored:Here you see examples of some of the grammatical forms listed in the attested (A) glossary below:
For Prof. L.R. Palmer’s extremely comprehensive glossary of Mycenaean Linear B words, see The Interpretation of Mycenaean Texts (1963), pp 403-466. Apart from Chris Tselentis’ Linear B Lexicon, this is far and away the most useful source of Mycenaean Linear B. KEY to abbreviations: ps = person singular; pp = person plural; f = future; o = optative; dat = dative; pi (siffix)= instrumental or primeval ablative case e.g teukepi = with instruments or paraphernalia Verbs: Infinitives: Present: akee = to send akere = to gather, collect apieke – to be covered all over apudoke = to deliver ekee = to have, hold eree = to row ereuterose = to set free, deliver from pere = to bring piriye = to saw woze = to work Future passive: dekasato = to be accepted Future: eureuterose = to set free (in the future) Present indicative active: ake 3 ps = he or she guides (sends?) apeeke 3ps = he or she lets go apieke 3ps = it contains??? apudoke 3ps = he or she delivers didosi 3pp = they give, devote, grant dose(i) 3ps = he or she gives dososi 3pp = they give ekamate 3ps = he or she stays eke 3ps = he or she has eko 2ps = I have ekome 1pp = we have ekote 2pp = you have ekosi 3pp they have eesi 3ps 3pp = he or she is, there is/they are? ereutero 1ps = I set free kitiyesi 3pp = they cultivate operosi 3pp = they owe oudidosi 3pp = they do not give, are not giving pasi 3pp = they say pere = he or she brings piriyo = I saw (i.e. a log) ponike 3ps = he or she decorates with a griffin teke = he or she puts or sets toqide 3ps = it has spirals weke = he or she works wide = he or she sees zeukesi 3pp = they yoke or span Present passive: ekeyoto = they are included Present optative: epikowo 3ps = that he or she may pay attention to euketo 3ps = that he or she may wish (for) qiriyato = that he or she may buy uruto = he or she may guard Aorist: didosi = they gave = 3rd. person plural present tense odoke = he or she gave oporo = they owed teke = he or she assigned owide (wide) = he or she saw Participles: Present Active: apeaso/a 3ps = absent diuyo/a or diwiyo/a 3ps = belonging eko/ekontes 3ps/3pp = having eo 3ps = being iyote 3pp = coming kesenewiyo/a = hospitable (a divine epithet) opero 3ps & operoso/a + operote 3pp = owing oromeno/a = watching over ouwoze = not working temidweta/te = having rims, i.e. with rims tetukuwoa/tetukuwea2 = well prepared, ready (for distribution on the market) toqideyo/a + toqideweso/a = with spirals zesomeno/a = boiling Present passive: anono = not rented audeweso/a = decorated with rosettes? dedemeno/a = bound dedomeno/a = (things) being offered dedukuyo/a = being apprenticed to epididato/a = distributed erapameno/a = sown (as of cloth) ereutero/a = set free kuparisiyo/ya = made of cypress pitiro2weso/a = adorned with feathers zeukesi 3ppdat = yoked, spanned wozomeno/a = being fashioned/well made Passive: tetukuwo/a = well prepared, ready Cf. etoimo/a (D) Perfect passive: aetito/a = not used? akitito/a = untitled? amoiyeto/a = just delivered anamoto/a = not assembled apato/a = not sown? emito/a = hired, paid epididato/a = distributed epizoto/a = bound, tied on top of iyeto/a = delivered, offered up (religious connotation) kakodeto/a = bound with copper? kekaumeno/a = burned, razed to the ground metakekumeno/a = dismantled? qeqinomeno/a = made by twisting Future perfect passive: ewepesesomena = things to be returned * pi (siffix)= instrumental or primeval * ablative case: We refer to the ablative case as primeval, since it had completely disappeared from ancient Greek as early as Homer. teukepi = with instruments or paraphernalia seremokarapi = decorated with sirens In the next post, we shall be addressing the present, future, imperfect, aorist and perfect tenses of thematic verbs in Mycenaean Linear B.
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Minoan Linear A kirita2 (kiritai) = delivery & kiretana = delivered (nos. 67 & 68 deciphered):After due consideration, I have decided that the terms kirita2 (kiritai) = “delivery” and kiretana = “delivered” on the following Minoan Linear A tablets from Haghia Triada, HT 114, HT 120, HT 121 & HT 129. Kirita2 (kiritai) is used in association with grain on HT 114 & HT 129, and with olive oil on HT 121. Kiretana, on the other hand, appears only on HT 120, again in association with grain. But how could I possibly have drawn the conclusion that these two terms were in any way related? It is actually quite simple. Both kirita2 (kiritai) = “delivery” and kiretana = “delivered” begin with almost the same prefix, i.e. kiri and kire. But does that make them directly related? If you stop to think about it, yes. I am convinced they are different grammatical forms of the same word, namely, “delivery” (nominative) in English. As It see it, kirita2 (kiritai) = “delivery” (nominative) & kiretana = “(having been) delivered” (perfect participle passive) which makes a great deal of sense in light of the fact that the same changes in form occur in all languages, ancient and modern. For instance, in Mycenaean Linear B, we have: apudosi = “delivery” (nominative) & apudedomeno = “(having been) delivered” (perfect participle passive) in English: delivery (nominative) & (having been) delivered (perfect participle passive) and in French: livraison = “delivery” (nominative) & (ayant été) livré = “(having been) delivered” (perfect participle passive) The problem with my decipherment is that it must compete with a number of other words which are frequently conjoined with the ideograms for “grain/wheat” and “olive oil” on several Linear A tablets, as noted below (with the number of occurrences of each term immediately following these potential alternatives): adaro 40 (ARKH 5) adu 680 (HT 92) apu2nadu 45(HT 14) ase 26 (HT 93) datu 15 (olive oil) (HT 123-124) iqa*118 50+ (HT 131) kupaja 16 (HT 116) pa3ni 33 (HT 102) pa3nina 12 (HT 93) pi*34te (HT 116) pitakase 161 (HT 21) pura2 40 (HT 116) qanuma 20 (HT 116) qaqaru 5(HT 93) saru 16 (olive oil) (HT 123-124) simita 5 (HT 96) siqine 12 (HT 116) tukirina 40 (HT 129) turunuseme 10 (HT 128) zu*22di 40 (HT 101) Any one of these words could be just as good a candidate. Right? Wrong. First of all, all but one of the terms given above occur only singly, which does not account for the shift from the nominative to the perfect participle passive. Kirita2 (kiritai) and kiretana (femine) do account for it in Minoan Linear A, but so also do apudosi and apudedomeno (neuter) do in Mycenaean Linear B. Moreover, the number of syllables in the Minoan Linear A terms is approximately equivalent to that of their Mycenaean Linear B counterparts. While this co-incidence does not necessarily ensure that the terms are equivalent in both syllabaries, the chances are that the greater the number of syllables in both, the greater the likelihood is that the selected terms are likely to be on target. In the list of alternative terms above, the only other tenable candidates are pa3ni (HT 102) & pa3nina (HT 93). Note in particular the identical shift from the nominative to the perfect participle passive in the latter, where the ppp. pa3nina has the exact same ultimate as does kiretana. Even if the latter terms pa3ni and pa3nina are actually the correct translations for “delivery” (nominative) & “(having been) delivered” (perfect participle passive) in Minoan Linear A rather than the two I have opted for, one or the other combination is likely to be correct, i.e. either: kirita2 (kiritai) = “delivery” (nominative) & kiretana = “(having been) delivered” (perfect participle passive) OR pa3ni = “delivery” (nominative) & pa3nina = “(having been) delivered” (perfect participle passive) However, I have opted for the former in light of the fact that in almost all languages, ancient or modern, the perfect participle passive deviates in its orthography from the nominative, as is also the case with Mycenaean Linear B, English and French above. It is for this reason that kirita2 (kiritai) = “delivery” (nominative) & kiretana = “(having been) delivered” (perfect participle passive) are more tenable than pa3ni (nominative) & pa3nina (perfect participle passive), of which the nominative and perfect participle passive share the exact same prefix, pa3ni, at least in my judgement. The question still remains, what do pa3ni (nominative) & pa3nina (perfect participle passive) mean? I shall have to see if I can tackle that problem later on. This brings the total number of Minoan Linear A terms I have managed to deciphered more or less accurately to 68. The likelihood that these two terms are correctly deciphered is very good (> 75%).
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An Introductory Glossary of General Linguistics Terminology: Part C: R-Z: This glossary is ostensibly not comprehensive in any sense of the term, but it serves as a solid baseline introduction to linguistics terminology.R recursive definition: a definition that refers to itself and thus defines an infinite set of things. = circular definition. Recursive definitions are all too frequently found in research, and they are a dangerous trap. rhotacism: 1. an exaggerated use of the sound of the letter R 2. inability to pronounce the letter R. + 3. a linguistic phenomenon in which a consonant changes into an R, as in Latin flos, where flos becomes florem in the accusative case. root: a morpheme from a lexical class, typically verbal, nominal or adjectival, from which a lexical word is built (by adding affixes). Examples: -song- in -songster- + -sing- in -singer- + -singing- See also, stem S segment: any discrete unit or phone (sound), produced by the vocal apparatus, or a representation of such a unit. semanteme: an indivisible unit of meaning. See also: semantics, semiology semantic role: the underlying relationship that a participant has with the main verb in a clause. Also known as: semantic case, thematic role, theta role (generative grammar), and deep case (case grammar). Semantic role is the actual role a participant plays in some real or imagined situation, apart from the linguistic encoding of those situations. Examples (active & passive): If, in some real or imagined situation, someone named John purposely hits someone named Bill, then John is the agent and Bill is the patient of the hitting event. Therefore, the semantic role of Bill is the same (patient=object) in both of the following sentences: John hit Bill. Bill was hit by John. In both of the above sentences, John has the semantic role of agent. semantics: 1. (linguistics) the science of the meaning of words. 2. the study of the relationship between words and their meanings. 3. the individual meanings of words, as opposed to the overall meaning of a passage. 4. the study of meaning in language; in generative grammar: how the meanings of words combine to form complex meanings of phrases and sentences. semi-consonant: see semi-vowel (English only) semiology: the study of meaning. semiotics: the study of signs and symbols, especially as means of language or communication. semi-vowel: speech sound produced with a little more constriction of the airflow in the oral cavity than a vowel. Semi-vowels in English = l & r, but not in any other modern Occidental Indo-European language, in which l & r are pure consonants. In English only, semi-vowels or semi-consonants are the result of the great vowel shift in the Middle Ages, which softened the harder consonantal pronunciation of l & r typical of French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Russian and many other Occidental languages into a much softer l & r. simulfix: a change or replacement of vowels or consonants (usually vowels) which changes the meaning of a word. Examples (English): -eat- becomes -ate - in past tense + -tooth- becomes -teeth- when plural. speech community: a group of people sharing characteristic patterns of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. stative verb: a verb that expresses a state of affairs or being rather than action. Stative verbs differ from verbs of action not just in meaning but in formal structure and usage. Some verbs can be both stative, expressing a state of affairs, and active. Stative English verbs include: be, concern, have. The verb -become- is both stative and active. stem: a morphological constituent larger than the root and smaller than the word. Derivational affixes are inside of the stem, and inflectional affixes attach to the stem. Examples: root = run + stem = runner + word = runners & root = sing + stem = singer + word = singers stress: a syllable having relative force or prominence. substantive: (broadly) a word or word group functioning syntactically as a noun. suffix: an affix that is attached to the end of a root or stem. Example (English): the past tense suffix -ed- attaches to the end of the verb stem -walk- to form the past tense -walked- Likewise, -ingest- to -ingested- & -transport- to -transported-. syllabary: 1. table or list of syllabic letters or syllables 2. writing system where each character represents a complete syllable. Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot are all syllabaries. syllable: 1.a unit of spoken language that is next bigger than a speech sound and consists of one or more vowel sounds alone or of a syllabic consonant alone or of either with one or more consonant sounds preceding or following; 2. one or more letters (as syl, la, and ble) in a word (as syllable) usually set off from the rest of the word by a centered dot or a hyphen and roughly corresponding to the syllables of spoken language and treated as helps to pronunciation or as guides to placing hyphens at the end of a line. synchronic: relating to the study of a language at only one point in its history. For instance, when a researcher limits his or her study to Mycenaean Linear B in the context of ancient Greek, the research is synchronic. Thus, synchronic linguistics is a key definition in the study of Minoan Linear A, Mycenaean Linear B, Arcado-Cypriot Linear C & Homeric Greek. syncretism: the fusion of different inflexional forms. synecdoche: a figure of speech in which the one of the following (or its reverse) is expressed either as: (a) a part stands for a whole (b) an individual stands for a class OR (c) a material stands for a thing. Examples (English): -fifty head- referring to -50 head of cattle- & -cat- referring to -lion-. synonomy: the relationship between words (or expressions) of sameness of meaning in some or all contexts. Synonyms: words (or expressions) that have the same meaning in some or all contexts. Examples: car = automobile + house = residence syntagma: syntactic string of words that forms a part of some larger syntactic unit; a construction. syntax: the study of the rules governing the way words and morphemes are combined to form phrases and sentences. synthetic: pertaining to the joining of bound morphemes in a word. Compare analytic synthetic language: a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language. Agglutinative languages tend to exhibit synthetic properties. Indo-European languages, Greek + languages of the Romance family (Latin, Italian, French, Romanian, Spanish etc.), of the Germanic family (English, German, Swedish etc.), of the Slavic family (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak,Serbo-Croatian etc.) and of the Indoaryan family (Sanskrit, Hindi, Persian etc.) are all synthetic languages. T time deixis: time diexis refers to time relative to a temporal reference point. Typically, this point is the moment of utterance. Examples (English)= Temporal adverbs: now/then/yesterday/today/tomorrow = adverbial function. tmesis: (prosody) the insertion of one or more words between the components of a compound word. Example: How bright (+the) chit (+and) chat, inserted into chit-chat trope: the figurative use of an expression. Tropes include euphemisms, hyperbole (exaggeration), irony, litotes (understatement), metaphor, metonymy, onomatopoeia and various other devices. typology: the systematic classification of the types of something according to their common characteristics. U unbound root: a root which can occur by itself as a separate word. Another morpheme need not be affixed to it to make it a word. Examples: root (instead of – roots- -rooted- - rooting- etc.) & think (instead of -thinks- -thinking- -think-tank- etc.) univocal: 1. having only one possible meaning. -or- 2. containing only one vowel Ursprache: proto-language, such as the proto-language from ancient Greek and Sanskrit presumably arose. Although we can never know the actual structure, vocabulary etc. of a proto-language, we can attempt to re-construct it retrogressively. V vocable: a word or utterance, especially with reference to its form rather than its meaning vowel: speech sound produced without a significant constriction of the airflow in the oral cavity. vowel modification: an addition or alteration to the basic way that a vowel is articulated. For instance, in most languages, including English, most vowels can be articulated as long or short, as in: -a- in -father- (short) in -ate- (long), -e- in -set- (short) -meet- (long) & -o- in -got- (short) -goat- (long)
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An Introductory Glossary of General Linguistics Terminology: Part A: A-GNOTE: This glossary is ostensibly not comprehensive in any sense of the term, but it serves as a solid baseline introduction to linguistics terminology. A abstract noun: a noun that denotes something viewed as a non-material referent, as opposed to a concrete noun. Examples: abstraction, attitude, communication, constitution, dependency, language, linguistics, magic, proliferation, rectitude, telecommunications. acrolect: the variety of speech that is considered the standard form. For example: the Attic dialect by the fourth century BCE. affix: a functional bound morpheme, typically short and with a functional meaning. Example: re in re-write. ambiguity: the property of words, terms, and concepts (within a particular context) as undefined, undefinable, or without an obvious definition, thus having an unclear meaning. A word, phrase, sentence, or uttered communication is called “ambiguous” if it can be interpreted in more than one way. Ambiguity is distinct from vagueness, which arises when the boundaries of meaning are indistinct. See also, connotation analytic language: language that conveys grammatical relationships without using inflectional morphemes. A grammatical construction can similarly be called analytic if it uses unbound morphemes, which are separate words, and/or word order. English, which began as a synthetic language, has become more & more analytic over time. Afrikaans & Hebrew are also analytic. Contrast with synthetic language (below). anaphora: anaphora is the co-reference of a second expression with its antecedent. For example: This lexicon of Greek terms is comprehensive; it is very useful. anthroponymy: the study of personal names. antonym: from Greek anti ("opposite") and onoma ("name") are word pairs that are opposite in meaning, such as -hot- -cold- + -fat- -skinny- & -down- -up-. Words may have different antonyms, depending on the meaning. Both -long- and -tall- are antonyms of -short-. Antonyms are of four types: Gradable antonyms stand at opposite ends ends of the spectrum: Examples: -cold- -hot- + -slow- -fast Complementary antonyms are pairs that express absolute opposites, like mortal and immortal. Relational antonyms are pairs in which one describes a relationship between two objects and the other describes the same relationship when the two objects are reversed, such as parent and child, teacher and student, or buy and sell. Auto-antonyms are the same words that can mean the opposite of themselves under different contexts or having separate definitions. Examples: to enjoin (to prohibit, issue injunction -or- to order, command) + fast (moving quickly -or- fixed firmly in place) + sanction (punishment, prohibition -or- permission) + stay (remain in a specific place -or- postpone) aspect: a grammatical category associated with verbs, which expresses the temporal view of the event or state expressed by the verb. Examples: she learns (simple present aspect + she is learning (progressive present aspect) + she has learned (present perfect aspect) auxesis: an exaggeration of the importance of a referent by the use of a referring expression that is disproportionate to it. Example: referring to a scratch as a wound. Synonym: exaggeration B basilect: a variety of a language that has diverged greatly from the standard form. For instance, the West Greek Doric dialect is a basilect quite far removed from the standard East Greek Attic dialect of the fifth century BCE. Doric Greek is also a basilect of Mycenaean Greek, for the obvious reason that the latter was predominant prior to the Doric invasion of Greece. bound morpheme: a morpheme which cannot stand alone to make a word, but must be combined with something else within a word. Examples: the -s- in the plural for tree = trees is a bound morpheme. Similarly, -cran- in cranberry. See also, free morpheme. C case: the grammatical category determined by varying syntactics or semantic functions of a noun, adjective or pronoun. Case is a function of only those languages which indicate certain functions by the inflection of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, or numerals. Greek, German, Latin & Russian are inflected languages. circular definition: definitions can be circular or recursive. The definition refers to itself, thus defining an infinite number of things. Example: a thing is an object and an object is a thing. Circular definitions are always self-referential, hence closed. They can be dangerous traps. See also, recursive definition. classifier: is an affix (often a suffix) that expresses the classification of a noun. Examples: Italian -raggazzo, raggazzi - (boy, masculine, sing. & pl.) + raggazza, raggazze (girl, feminine, sing. & pl.), where nouns are classified by gender & number. collocation: a grouping or juxtaposition of words that commonly occur together. Example: by me, on a, with & the. comitative case: this is the case expressing accompaniment, expressed in inflected languages such as Greek & Latin by a preposition with the meaning "with" or "accompanied by." In Greek, meta = with + para = by (plus other prepositions expressing subtle distinctions). The usage of the comitative case in Greek is complex, and must be determined by context. concrete noun: a noun that refers to what is viewed as a material entity, i.e. a thing . Examples: box, car, flag, lumber, post, rock, stump, table. connotation: 1. a meaning that is suggested or implied, as opposed to a denotation, or a literal definition. A characteristic of words or phrases, or of the contexts that words and phrases are used in. Connotations of the phrase, "You are a dog" = you are physically unattractive or morally reprehensible, not that you are a canine. 2. In semiotics, connotation arises when the denotative relationship between a signifier and its signified is inadequate to serve the needs of the community. A second level of meanings is termed connotative. These meanings are not objective representations of the thing, but new usages produced by the language group. consonant: a speech sound produced with a significant constriction of the airflow in the oral tract. co-ordination: the linking of two or more elements as conjuncts in a coordinate structure such as -and- or -or- + in a list. corpus: a collection of writings, often on a specific topic, of a specific genre, from a specific demographic, a single author etc. co-reference: a reference in one expression to the same referent in another expression. Example: You said that you would come (English). Est-ce que vous me dites que vous viendrez? (French). corruption: word that has adopted from another language but whose spelling has been changed through misunderstanding, transcription error, mishearing, etc. continuous aspect: the imperfect(ive) aspect that expresses an ongoing, but not habitual, occurrence of the state or event expressed by the verb. Examples: he is running, he was running (English) + amant, amabant (they love, they loved: Latin). Ancient Greek & Latin cannot distinguish between continuous habitual & inceptive aspects in the present, future & imperfect tenses, and their compounds. copula: an intransitive verb which links the subject with an adjective, a noun phrase or a predicate. Examples: The book is on the table (English) Le livre est sur la table (French). D definite pronoun: a pronoun that belongs to a class whose members indicate definite reference. Examples: the, this, that in English. The indefinite pronoun -the- is non-existent in Latin, in Mycenaean Linear B & in Homer but existent in Arcado-Cypriot, Classical Ionic, Attic, Hellenic & Koine (New Testament) Greek. denotation: 1. The act of denoting, or something (such as a symbol) that denotes. 2. the primary or explicit meaning of a word, phrase or symbol. 3. something signified or referred to; a particular meaning of a symbol. 4. In semiotics, denotation is the surface or literal meaning encoded to a signifier, and the definition most likely to appear in a dictionary. derivation: 1. formation of new words by adding affixes. Example: -singer- from -sing- + -adaptation- from -adapt- 2. derivation in linguistics is the process of changing the meaning and/or lexical class of a lexeme by adding a morpheme. derivative: 1. In a lexical database or lexicon, a derivative is sub-entry. Only irregular, semantic derivatives are entered as separate major entries. 2. a stem formed by combining a root with an affix to add a component of meaning that is more than inflectional. The meaning of a derivative is determined by its context, not its parts. Also known as: derived form, derived stem 3. A derivative is a stem formed by derivation, which is a morphosyntactic operation. Kinds of derivatives: 1. Grammatical derivatives: Example: nominalized stems, such as encouragement from encourage adverbialized stems, such as courageously from courageous 2. Semantic derivatives such as generation from generate + isolation from isolate. diachronic linguistics: the study of language change over time, is also called historical linguistics. This is extremely important to research in ancient Greek, which was subject to significant changes in all of its dialects over time, especially when the time frame is extreme (i.e. a millennium, from Mycenaean to Attic Greek). diachrony: the study of change over time, especially changes to language. dialectology: the study of dialects. diphthong: a phonetic sequence, consisting of a vowel and a glide, that is interpreted as a single vowel. Examples: ai, ei, oi in English. dummy word: a grammatical unit that has no meaning, but completes a sentence to make it grammatical. Examples: It is raining + Do you understand? E elision: the omission of sounds, syllables, or words in spoken or written discourse. Unstressed words are the most likely to be elided. Examples: camra for camera + evry for every in English. Elision is very common in ancient Greek, but not in Mycenaean Linear B or in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, since the latter are both syllabaries, in which all syllabograms must end with a vowel, making elision impossible. enclitic: a clitic (suffix) that is phonologically bound to (i.e. inseparable from) the end of a preceding word to form a single unit. Examples: can’t, won’t & shouldn’t in English. Aminisode & Konosode (towards Amnisos, towards Knossos) in Mycenaean Greek. Enclitics are very common in ancient Greek. epigraphy: from the Greek: epi-graph, literally "on-writing", "inscription" is the study of inscriptions or epigraphsas writing + the science of identification, classification, dating & drawing conclusions about graphemes. epigrapher: person using the methods of epigrapher or epigraphist, who studies inscriptions, most of which are brief. epistemic modality: a modality that connotes how much certainty or evidence a speaker has for the proposition expressed by his or her utterance. Examples: We will come (certainty) + She must have come + He may have come (uncertainty) + They might come (uncertainty) (English). The subjunctive expresses uncertainty in several languages, including English (rarely), German, French, Italian, Latin & Greek. Greek also has the optative to express uncertainty. In a lexicon as general as this one, it is not expedient to attempt to express the distinctions between the optative and the subjective in ancient Greek, as the relationship between the two is complex. In other words, you have to know ancient Greek very well to understand these distinctions and their several applications. etymology: 1 the study of the historical development of languages, particularly as manifested in individual words. 2 an account of the origin and historical development of a word. 3. the study of the origins of words. Through old texts and comparison with other languages, etymologists reconstruct the history of words — when they entered a language, from what source, and how their form and meaning have changed. From Greek: true meaning = etymos (true) + logos (word). Etymology is extremely important in the archaic in Mycenaean and Arcado-Cypriot, which in turn determine the etymology of a number of words in several later ancient Greek dialects. extraposition: the movement of an element from its normal place to one at the end, or near the end, of a sentence. F family: a group of languages believed to have descended from the same ancestral language, e.g. the Indo-European language family from Proto-Indo-European. finite verb: a verb form that occurs in an independent clause, and fully inflected according to the inflectional categories marked on verbs in the language. fossil: in linguistics, a fossilized word or term is extremely old, extinct, or outdated. Some words in Mycenaean Greek were already fossilized by the time Homer wrote the Iliad, and a much more significant number of Mycenaean words completely disappeared from later ancient Greek dialects. On the other hand, a number of Mycenaean words, such as apudosi (delivery) were never fossilized. free morpheme: 1. a grammatical unit that can occur by itself. Additional morphemes such as affixes (prefixes, suffixes) can be attached to it. Examples: berry, blue, cat, colour (hence: colourful, colourless), dog, elephant, green (hence: greenery), house, intern (hence: internship), orange, red, white, yellow. 2. a morpheme which can stand alone to make a word by itself. Example: -blue- in -blueberry- See also, bound morpheme. function word: a word which has little or no meaning of its own but which has a grammatical function. Examples in English: a, of, on, in, the. Function words play a key obligatory role in all languages. They are the glue that hold languages together syntactically. G gender. See, grammatical gender gloss: A gloss (from Koine Greek glossa, meaning 'tongue') is a note made in the margins or between the lines of a book, in which the meaning of the text in its original language is explained, sometimes in its own language, sometimes in another language. Glosses vary in comprehensiveness and complexity, from simple marginal notations of difficult or obscure words, to entire interlinear translations of the original text and cross references to similar passages. glossary: 1. a collection of glosses is a glossary 2. a collection of specialized terms with their meanings. Example: An English-Mycenaean Linear B Glossary 3. a list of terms defined in a particular domain of knowledge. Glossaries often appear at the end a book and often include either newly introduced or uncommon terms. glottochronology: the study of languages to determine when they diverged from being the same language. For instance, the divergence of Italian from Latin. glottogony: 1. the genesis of language, i. e. the emergence of a system of verbal communication from proto-linguistic or non-linguistic means of communication 2. the study of language origins. grammatical gender: a class system for adjectives & nouns, composed of two or three classes, whose nouns have at least human male and female referents and in some languages an inanimate referent (neuter). In many languages, gender is very often not classed by any correlation with natural sex distinctions. The genders of nouns classified in this fashion (masculine, feminine, neuter) do not necessarily refer to the masculine (male gender), feminine (female gender) or inanimate (neuter gender). In many cases a masculine noun can also be feminine or even neuter, or any other combination of genders. Genders for the exact same word may differ in different languages. Examples: il mare (sea, masculine Italian) + la mer (sea, feminine, French), mare (sea, neuter, Latin) le tour (walk, stroll, run, e.g. le Tour de France) + la tour (tower, French) etc. Examples of languages with two genders are French, Italian & Spanish & with three genders: German, Greek & Latin. by Richard Vallance Janke, 2015
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Table of Athematic Third Declension Nouns & Adjectives in “eu” in Mycenaean Linear B: Click to ENLARGENOTE: this table took me 12 hours (!) to compile. I sincerely hope that some of our visitors will acknowledge this in some way or other, by tagging the post with LIKE, assigning it the numbers of STARS they believe it merits, by re-blogging it, posting it on Facebook, tweeting it, posting it on Scoopit, whatever... Based on the template declension of the noun qasireu = “viceroy” in Mycenaean Linear B, itself derived in large part from extant archaic forms in The Catalogue of Ships of Book II of the Iliad by Homer, we have here all of the nouns, including proper, and adjectives I have been able to cull from various sources, all of which are referenced in the KEY at the top of the table. There are a few items in particular we need to take into consideration: (a) Apart from proper nouns, there are very few extant or derived nouns or adjectives in “eu” in Mycenaean Linear B; (b) The astonishing thing about the extant proper nouns is that a considerable number of them are also found in The Catalogue of Ships of Book II of the Iliad, in the most archaic Greek, hence, the most reliable source for derived Mycenaean proper names. While some proper names which are found in the Linear B Lexicon by Chris Tselentis are not found in The Catalogue of Ships, they are nevertheless Homeric. When I say “Homeric”, I refer specifically to proper names solely from The Catalogue of Ships, as those which are found elsewhere in the Iliad or the Odyssey may not be authentic Mycenaean eponymns or names, unless of course they are replicated in The Catalogue of Ships. I am, in short, extremely reticent to accept proper names as Mycenaean, unless they occur in The Catalogue of Ships. (c) On the other hand, the rest of the proper names found in this table may very well be, and some of them must be authentic Mycenaean proper names. Given this, it is quite probable that at least some of these names not to be found anywhere in Homer are nevertheless the names of original Mycenaean heroes and warriors, which might have been mentioned in an original Mycenaean epic of the Trojan War, almost certainly oral. It is absolutely critical in this scenario to underscore one point in particular: that if there ever did exist a Mycenaean epic upon which the Iliad was based, such a (stripped-down) epic could only have seeded The Catalogue of Ships, and no other part of the Iliad or Odyssey, since it is in The Catalogue of Ships alone that we find far and away the greatest number of occurrences of archaic Greek, and not in the remainder of the Iliad or the Odyssey. Some will of course argue that some archaic remnants still pop up here and there in the the remainder of the Iliad and Odyssey, but it is important to realize in this particular that Homer most likely – indeed, almost certainly – (unconsciously) carried over the habit of using bits and pieces of archaic Greek, much more common in The Catalogue of Ships, to the rest of the epic cycle. In fact, there is real doubt that he ever did compose outright The Catalogue of Ships. Rather, it appears, he may very well have had access to an earlier, archaic epic, which had indeed been copied from its original Mycenaean template. He then in turn copied the whole thing lock-stock-and-barrel, embellishing it with his own peculiar style in so-called Epic Greek, as he went along. That seems the more likely scenario to me. At any rate, the more simplistic structure, and above all other considerations, the characteristically Mycenaean inventory have stamped themselves prominently on The Catalogue of Ships alone. If nothing else, there can be little or no doubt that the entire Catalogue of Ships (exclusive of the rest of Book II of the Iliad, which was a later addition) was composed well before the rest of the Iliad, and long before the Odyssey. So the question remains, Who were all those Mycenaean warriors? Which ones had Homer forgotten, or conveniently omitted from The Catalogue of Ships? One thing appears almost undeniable. The proper names we see in this table, which are not in The Catalogue of Ships, are very likely those of Mycenaean wanaka or kings, qasirewe or viceroys, heroes and other assorted warriors. Why they do not appear anywhere in the Iliad is beyond our reckoning. But they do appear on extant Mycenaean Linear B tablets, and this constitutes enough evidence for me that they were important figures to the Mycenaeans. Richard
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REVISED: Archaic Declensions in “eu” in Mycenaean Greek = “eus” in Homeric Greek: Click to ENLARGEOne of the most archaic declensions in ancient Greek is the Athematic Third Declension in which nouns in the nominative end in “eus” in Homeric Greek or “eu” in Mycenaean Greek, as illustrated by the complete declension table above of the noun “qasireu” = “viceroy” in Mycenaean Linear B, and of “basileus” = “(lesser) king” in Homeric Greek. The process whereby I can reasonably reconstruct any verb conjugation or any nominal or adjectival declension from the Homeric Greek of The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of the Iliad or, failing that, from Book II of the Iliad, I call regressive extrapolation. In the table of the athematic third declension above for “qasireu” = “viceroy” in Mycenaean Linear B, very few forms are already attested on the tablets (mainly the nominative singular), but all of the cases, singular, dual and plural, can be reconstructed with almost complete accuracy by means of regressive extrapolation. It is critical in this regard to understand that, if at all possible, the forms derived in this manner must reflect their most archaic equivalents in Homer, which is why I always resort to The Catalogue of Ships in Book II, and also why I have taken it upon myself to translate The Catalogue in its entirety (although I still have 4 more sequential sections to translate). Once I have reconstructed any conjugation or declension, and the table is complete, as seen above, the process of reconstruction in Mycenaean Linear B forward through all the cases (nominative, genitive, dative/locative/instrumental & accusative) and all three numbers (singular, dual & plural) I call progressive extrapolation. Starting this month, and working through the spring of 2015, I shall attempt to reconstruct as many declensions of nouns and adjectives as I am convinced can stand the test of regressive-progressive extrapolation, without resulting in absurdities, i.e. without falling into the trap of reductio ab adsurdum. Unfortunately, such reconstruction can be and sometimes is open to precisely that pitfall. So where it is impossible to reconstruct any verbal conjugation or nominal/ adjectival declension without unsubstantiated Homeric or Arcado-Cypriot forms, I shall not do so. Last year (2014), we successfully reconstructed verb tables for the present, future, imperfect, aorist & perfect tenses of the active voice of both thematic and athematic verbs in Mycenaean Linear B, of which the complete tables can be consulted in the CATEGORY, PROGESSIVE LINEAR B, of this blog. In the next post, I shall provide a reasonably comprehensive list of nouns and adjectives in the Athematic Third Declension, ending in “eu” in Mycenaean Greek. The likelihood that the Mycenaean Linear B syllabogram for WE is indicative of the nominative plural of certain Mycenaean nouns and adjectives of the athematic third declension was first brought to my attention by Ms. Gretchen Leonhardt, whose site is: Click on this Banner to visit -
By extapolation, the same principle can be applied to the Mycenaean Linear B syllabogram for WA, which is reperesentative of the accusative plural of certain nouns and adjectives of the athematic third declension, among others. Richard
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Linear B “To all the gods... ” There is much more than meets the eye in Rita Roberts’ Astute Translation: Click to ENLARGENow that Rita has been translating tablets from Linear B into English for well over a year, she has come to learn quite a few tricks of the trade, and is well aware of the numerous pitfalls that beset translators of Mycenaean Greek, who can and all too often do fail to “read” everything that the scribes meant to convey, leaving unsaid what they all knew perfectly well they actually were saying to one another, regardless of inventorial context. This phenomenon occurs over and over on the majority of Linear B tablets, and always for the same reason: the scribes were forced to save as much valuable space as they possibly could on a very small, cramped medium, the Linear B tablet. They quickly became extremely adept at finding clever little shortcuts around the problem of cramming as much essential – versus inessential - information as they could into the little space afforded them. What Rita has assumed in the specific context of this text, which happens to be uncharacteristically religious for Linear B, is just this: the text does not merely read, “to all the gods oil 1”. That is a patently ridiculous, semantically stripped translation. This would be tantamount to an inventory nowadays stating something silly like, “for the car oil 1”, when we really mean,“1 refill can of type XX oil for our car.” She is fully aware that the Linear B scribe who wrote this text was actually saying much more than that. The scribe was able to telescope or abstract the full content of his message into just 2 Linear B words + 1 ideogram + the numeral 1. So what exactly was he saying? Today, we no longer know, nor can we. But rest assured that all his fellow scribes knew exactly what he was saying, because they all followed the same “script”, consisting of the same formulaic, usually partial, phrases; the same logograms and ideograms; and the same supersyllabograms repeated over and over, from Knossos to Phaistos to Pylos to Mycenae to Thebes, you name it, anywhere where Mycenaean Greek was written down in Linear B. The Mycenaean Greek as composed in Linear B was by far the most uniform ancient Greek script, because it was an inventorial language, and nothing more, in other words, a finely telescoped subset of the Mycenaean dialect. No one has ever seen the Mycenaean dialect per se actually written out in full sentences, paragraphs and documents, because it never was. I repeat, Linear B is a small statistical inventorial subset of Mycenaean Greek. To view it any other way is tantamount to forcing it far beyond its clearly defined, restricted boundaries, and to twist it into something it was never meant to be, i.e. a dialectical script. However, just because we can no longer really be sure nowadays what the formulaic language the Minoan/Mycenaean scribes actually conveyed in each and every specific context (agricultural, textiles, military, religious etc.), this does at all not imply that we cannot hazard various tenable reconstructions of their original intent... because in fact we can. In some cases, the underlying full context lies closely enough to the surface that only a few, possibly as many as four, truly tenable translations are likely to arise. That is the case with this tablet. Rita and I discussed at some length the putative meanings that could possibly be assigned to this text, and we could only come up with four. These are: (a) Rita’s own translation, “To all the (our) gods an offering * of one gift of oil.” (b) “To all the (our) gods one vessel (vial) of oil.” (c) “To all the (our) gods an offering * of one vessel (vial) of olive oil.” (d) “To all the (our) gods a gift of one vessel (vial) of oil.” OMITTED: any of these words: our, offering, gift, vessel, vial, olive oil & anyway, just who are “all the gods”! The scribes all knew. We don’t. Too bad. Tough. The reason for the insertion of the Mycenaean Linear B word, * APUDOSIS * (offering) is transparent enough. It was frequently used on Linear B tablets in contexts just such as this, and so, if omitted, it can still be supplied. Secondly, the oil used by the Greeks was almost always olive oil, which of course had to be contained in some type of vessel. There are well over 20 Linear B ideograms for vessels. But why mention the vessel when (as I am sure any scribe would have told you) it is obvious to any idiot that you put olive oil in a vessel. Omit what it obvious to “everyone” (us scribes) & save lots of space. Great! Ergo... one thing is pretty much certain. At least one of the translations above has to be almost spot on, regardless of word order, which does not amount to much more than a hill of beans in Mycenaean Greek anyway, given that as much is left unsaid as is spelled out. In our next post, we shall discuss in greater detail the profound implications this methodology of interpretation has on the decipherment and translation of practically all Linear B tablets right acrossthe board. Richard
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Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae 2014: The Year in Review and then some, our new blog, Transcendence and The Singularity, in 2015 Although our blog is only 20 months old, it has assumed a prominent rôle as one of the Internet’s primary resources on current research into Mycenaean Linear B and much more besides. We are also the fist and foremost source for the ongoing study of Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, for which until now very few adequate resources have existed on the Internet. We have carefully classified our blog into several main Categories, which appear right at the top of the Home Page of our blog, as you see here: Click to ENLARGEThe Categories of PRIMARY concern to ourselves and, we hope, to all of us worldwide who are deeply committed to the furtherance of research into Mycenaean Greek & Linear B, as well as into Arcado-Cypriot and Linear C, are highlighted in UPPER CASE. This does not imply that the other Categories are not important. They are. It is just that we devote less of our time and resources to them than to the PRIMARY Categories. In our first full year of operation, 2014, we set out to reach certain goals, and we are pleased to announce that we have attained or exceeded them all. These are prioritized as follows: 1. The theory and practical implementation of the new theory of SUPERSYLLABOGRAMS in Mycenaean Linear B. While Prof. John Chadwick, Michael Ventris, Prof. Thomas G. Palaima and Chris Tselentis were all aware of the existence of supersyllabograms in one form or another, and while the latter three had each isolated certain instances of their appearance in Linear B, none of them actually “defined” them as such, since none of them was aware of all of the practical applications of supersyllabograms in Linear B, of which there are three, as we shall soon enough see in 2015. It is my intention to publish, in concert with my research colleague, Rita Roberts, a full-length research article in PDF format, The Theory and Applications of Sypersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, sometime in 2015, probably no earlier than the summer, as we fully intend to have it peer-reviewed by at least 2 of the world’s leading experts or institutions intimately involved with Linear B prior to publication, among whom we can hopefully count on Prof. Thomas G. Palaima, Chris Tselentis and the Heraklion Museum: Click to ENLARGE
2. The translation of as many extant Linear B tablets as we could reasonably hope to handle, without over-stretching our human resources. There are two translators of Linear B on our Blog, my now advanced student of Linear B, Rita Roberts, and myself. Between us, we have managed to translate into English scores of Linear B tablets from Knossos, four from Pylos, and one each from Mycenae and Thebes. You can review all of our translations for yourself by clicking on the Categories SCRIPTA MINOA for tablets from Knossos and Tablets for Linear A, B & C tablets and fragments from anywhere else. 3. Throughout the spring of 2014, I also began reconstructing the grammar of Mycenaean Greek from the ground up, successfully building complete verb conjugations for the active voice in all of the these tenses of both thematic and athematic verbs: present, future, imperfect, aorist & perfect, leaving other tenses aside for reasons which will be made clear later in 2015: Click to ENLARGE
I intend to continue with the reconstitution of derived forms for the declensions of nouns and adjectives, and for the use of cases with prepositions, including the early instrumental case which fell into disuse by the time alphabetic Greek came to the fore in the eighth century BCE. 4. We also believe that a successful decipherment of Minoan Linear A may be around the corner (i.e. within the next five years or so), for reasons which will become apparent with the creation of our new blog, TRANSCENDENCE, as of early 2015:
The title of our new blog is, of course, based on the movie of the same name, Transcendence & The Singularity, 2014, starring Johnny Depp and Rebecca Hall. Our new Blog is to serve as an international online forum for the sharing of novel ideas, new theories and advances in the following areas of scientific research now dominating the world scene: the implications of the Curiosity Project on Mars and of the search for exoplanets for the potential and probable discovery if life elsewhere in the universe; the active involvement of NASA, other major international Space agencies and organizations in extraterrestrial communication; the emergence of cosmic consciousness beyond our earthly sphere of knowledge for the first time in human history and, of course, the search for the practical application of artificial intelligence and its implications for human affairs in all spheres of life, with reference to the likelihood that the well-touted Singularity will occur sometime in our century, possibly as early as 2025-2030, more likely around 2040-2050. These will be our primary concerns on that blog. It is not so much a question of I myself sharing my own knowledge, pitifully limited as it is, of these critical advancements in the sphere of our scientific knowledge-base as of seeking as much input and as variegated feedback from the scientific and technological community worldwide, as well as from amateurs such as ourselves, on these amazing developments now sweeping over the planet. 5. Concurrent with the creation of our Blog, Transcendence and the Singularity, we shall be pursuing the possibilities for the practical application of Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C on this blog to extraterrestrial communication, a project which is already well underway here under the rubric, NASA at the top of our home page. Click on the NASA banner to read more about this truly fascinating research project:
6. We shall also be taking our first steps towards the compilation of the most comprehensive vocabulary of Mycenaean Linear B ever yet developed, A Topical English-Mycenaean Greek Lexicon. We intend to double the Mycenaean Greek lexicon of some 2,500 attested (A) words currently known to 5,000 attested (A) and derived (D) at the very minimum, with a large number of derived (D) words regressively extrapolated from these sources in descending order of priority: (a) the extant vocabulary of Arcado-Cypriot, in both Linear C and in the alphabetical Arcado-Cypriot dialect, since this dialect is more closely related to Mycenaean Greek than even Attic Greek is to Ionic; (b) The Catalogue of Ships in Book II of Homer’s Iliad, in which we find the most archaic Greek after the Arcado-Cypriot dialect, a Greek which still contains a number of grammatical elements left over from Mycenaean Greek. I shall have translated the entire Catalogue of Ships into English before the end of winter 2015 as the framework or template, if you like, for the regressive extrapolation of derived (D) Mycenaean Greek; (c) from the rest of the Iliad and (d) from the early Aeolic, Ionic and Attic dialects, prior to the fifth century BCE. I must lay particular stress on the fact that Mycenaean Greek vocabulary can only be derived (D) from these dialects alone, since all are East Greek dialects, right on down from Mycenaean to Attic Greek. Mycenaean Greek words emphatically cannot be derived (D) from West Greek dialects such as the Doric, as these are not directly related to it. Richard
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Translation of the Silver Spoon Inscription in Linear C, “Clotho, the Spinner” at the British Museum
Translation of the Silver Spoon Inscription in Linear C, “Clotho, the Spinner” at the British Museum: Click to ENLARGE
This is a truly difficult inscription to translate. In the first place, we cannot be sure that the subject is a person actually called “Ammus”, a name, apparently Egyptian, which sounds suspiciously like that of the Egyptian deity Amun Ra, King of the gods, god of the wind and patron deity of Thebes, who rose to prominence in the 11th. dynasty in the twenty-first century BCE (ca. 4,200 years ago): Click on the image of Amun-Ra for the Wikipedia article on him:
It is also abundantly clear that the Linear C syllabary, which was frequently used alongside the Arcado-Cypriot dialectical Greek alphabet, had made huge strides over Mycenaean Linear B, especially by the 6th. century BCE, when the inscription you see on this spoon was composed. As for the silver spoon itself, the inscription appears only in Linear C; so it is impossible to cross-correlate with an equivalent in the Arcado-Cypriot Greek alphabet. Had there been a version of this inscription in alphabetic Greek, we would have been certain of an unequivocal, indisputable translation of the text on this silver spoon. As it stands, with the inscription appearing only in Linear C, we are left to our best devices. The translation you see here is my own interpretation, and is at least in part subject to dispute. As you can see, I have interpreted the verb as the Arcado-Cypriot aorist middle corresponding to the same tense of the Attic Greek verb, kathisteimi. I had serious problems interpreting the last word in the sentence, but I finally settled on what I suspect is probably the Arcado-Cypriot dative singular for the Attic name of the Muse, Clotho, the youngest of the three Fates or Moirai, the same who spun the thread of life: click to ENLARGE her image
Structural and Grammatical Considerations:
It is immediately obvious to anyone familiar with ancient Greek dialects contemporaneous with the 6th. century BCE Ionic and Attic, that Linear C had made huge strides over the much older Mycenaean Linear B syllabary. First off, the Linear C syllabary was from the outset in the 11th. century BCE, structurally much simpler than Linear B, having abandoned once and for all time all logograms and ideograms characteristic of both Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B. Linear C is simply a syllabary and nothing more. Grammatical Considerations: While we can be pretty much certain that the earliest Arcado-Cypriot documents in Linear C could not possibly have made use of the definite article, the typical later ancient Greek construction of a verb + ta (these things) in the neuter plural, the advanced dative singular with the definite article or the use of the definite article preceding names of gods and abstract words, all of these characteristics are firmly in place on this tablet, which was after all composed in the sixth century BCE, some 500 years after the first appearance of Linear C on the scene.
These developments are extremely significant. In the first place, even if we did not know the precise dating for this inscription, we would still know that it had to have been written no earlier than the sixth century BCE, since all of the grammatical elements we have flagged in the notes on the tablet above only appeared in ancient Greek (regardless of dialect) from that century onwards. The telltale signs for this dating are:
(a) Whereas in Mycenaean Linear B it is not possible to clearly identify the gender of the nominative singular for nouns which are either masculine or neuter, such is not the case in Linear C. All nouns of any gender end in “se” in the nominative singular.
(b) the use of the definite article twice in the same inscription. The definite article never appeared in early Greek writings, not even in the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer.
(c) Radically unlike texts on in Mycenaean Linear B, inscriptions in latter-day Linear C not only sported the definite article, but made frequent use of the typical Ionic-Attic verbal construction of a verb (in any tense) + the definite article in the neuter plural (ta) to denote abstract constructions, i.e. abstract thought. Abstractions are almost totally absent from Mycenaean Linear B tablets.
(d) Finally, the dative singular, again used with the definite article for the names of gods & goddesses, city names and the like, was a huge leap forward from equivalent constructions in the dative singular on tablets in Mycenaean Linear C, where it is often difficult at best even to identify the dative singular, let alone distinguish it from the nominative singular. The same holds true for the nominative and dative plural, and indeed for all the cases. It is easy to isolate cases in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, not only because the syllabary clearly demarcates them, but also because the definite article frequently appears in all cases. The same can scarcely be said of tablets or inscriptions in Mycenaean Linear B, in which the cases are all too often ambiguous, making it difficult to determine which is subject, which is direct and which is indirect object. Note that in the last instance of the dative singular on the silver spoon, I have translate the Greek for – the = + the feminine dative sing. of the number one as: for the one and only, because – miai – uncharacteristically follows the noun, i.e. the name of the muse, Clotho, adding extra emphasis to it. Although she is only one of the three Fates or Moiroi, she is in her own right the one and only of her kind. An earlier translation of this tablet which I found on the Internet tells us that the dedication is to the Golgian goddess, whoever that is supposed to be. Yet my own translation makes much more sense, given the century in which this inscription was composed, the 6th. cent. BCE, when the Three Fates or Moiroi were familiar fare to Greeks everywhere.
The only case which is clearly demarcated in Linear B is the genitive, which appears as “oyo” in the masculine singular, “oya” in the feminine singular & “isi” in the plural. Otherwise, we are left to our own devices. The same cannot be said of inscriptions in Linear C, unless they are very early. There is only one such inscription that I know of, which I have already translated, dating from the eleventh century BCE. The Profound Implications of Cross-Correlation of Equivalent Vocabulary in Mycenaean Greek Arcado-Cypriot: All other extant inscriptions in Arcado-Cypriot Linear C date from the sixth to the fourth centuries BCE. Of these, the extremely long Idalion Tablet, an official decree, leaves little or no room for doubt with respect to the grammatical clarity or the vocabulary of documents written in the Arcado-Cypriot dialect. The vocabulary of such inscriptions cannot be in doubt in those instances where the inscription exists both in Linear C and in the Arcado-Cypriot alphabet, as is the case with the Idalion tablet. The vocabulary on that tablet cannot be interpreted as meaning anything other than what it says in the alphabetic version, leaving no room for alternative interpretations in the Linear C version.
This fact alone has immense implications for tablets and inscriptions in Mycenaean Linear B, on which there appears any word which has an exact or nearly equivalent Linear C version. In such cases, the meaning of the Mycenaean word equivalent to its Arcado-Cypriot counterpart is relatively fixed, once and for all. Once put into practical application, this development will have a profound impact on the interpretation of many Mycenaean words which have (near) exact equivalents in Arcado-Cypriot, leaving little or no room for interpretations of their meanings, and effectively invalidating such interpretations where they clearly clash with their Arcado-Cypriot equivalents, either in Linear C or in the Arcado-Cypriot Greek alphabet. Recall that these two dialects are far more closely related than any other ancient Greek dialects, even the Ionic and Attic. Once you know and accept this fact, it becomes next to impossible to deny the evidence of Arcado-Cypriot words for which there are (exact) equivalents in Mycenaean Linear B. We intend to carry this hypothesis to its logical terminus, settling once and for all at least some of the disputes that have occurred over the “meanings” of a number of Mycenaean Greek words since the decipherment of the syllabary by the genius, Michael Ventris, in 1952-1953. Any word which says what it clearly says in Linear C or in the Arcado-Cypriot alphabet must almost certainly mean (almost) precisely the same thing in Mycenaean Greek. A rose is a rose is a rose.
Richard
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The Linear B Ideogram for “wheat” = SITO. Ideograms are fun! (Click to ENLARGE):I don’t know about you, but I think learning Linear B ideograms is fun. Since there are so many of them (at least 100!), it makes for easier translation of a lot of Linear B tablets. As is their usual practice, Linear B scribes writing Mycenaean Greek frequently resorted to ideograms, since they were a great way to save precious space on those small tablets they used. Once again, we see Linear B scribes resorting to what I prefer to call Linear B shorthand. Ideograms are only 1 way to achieve this goal. Logograms and supersyllabograms are another. Scribes also routinely did not even bother with nominal and adjectival declensions and verb conjugations, because what was the point when (yes, here we go again!) they could save valuable space on the tablets. These scribes were a clever bunch, who had the routine down pat, following strict standard universal guidelines which apply to tablets, no matter what their provenance (Knossos, Phaistos, Pylos etc.). The use of a script, in this case, a syllabary as shorthand is a highly unusual trait for ancient writing systems, unless of course they are hieroglyphic, in which case they are automatically shorthand. We must nevertheless make a clear distinction between so-called hieroglyphic “shorthand”, since the Egyptian scribes almost certainly were not conscious that this is what hieroglyphics actually are. Since the entire system of Egyptian writing was hieroglyphic, from top to bottom, it was simply writing to them, and nothing more. On the other hand, it is quite clear that the Minoan scribes writing Mycenaean Greek in Linear B almost certainly were conscious that they were using shorthand, because they deliberately mixed logograms, ideograms and supersyllabograms with regular text spelled out, a practice totally unheard of in Egyptian writing, or for that matter in cuneiform and other earlier scripts prior to Linear B. Whether Linear A shared this characteristic with Linear B is an open question, but if it did, this would give us yet another clue to the eventual decipherment of Linear A. We note also that when the Greek alphabet was finally adopted ca. 900 – 800 BCE, shorthand, as practised in Linear B, disappeared, because it was no longer needed, being impractical and redundant in the earliest alphabetic system. In fact, I am now quite confident to postulate that Linear B is in fact to a large extent a shorthand for Mycenaean Greek. Yes, the scribes did spell out words, but they just as often did not, resorting instead to the totally innovative, clever tricks I have mentioned above. It also strikes me that the practice of cultivating grain and wheat right at the port of Knossos, Amnisos, was a truly intelligent economic practice. By so doing, the Minoans were able to expedite the international shipping of grain and wheat supplies, especially in the case of emergencies or famine abroad. This is yet another reminder that the Minoans were eminently practical businessmen, familiar at least with some of the fundamental principles of economics, as we understand that term nowadays. Incidentally, my translation “cultivation practices for grain” is entirely speculative, and probably wrong. But as is my usual practice, I would much rather take a shot at some sort of translation that at least makes contextual sense than not try at all. After all, nobody’s going to shoot me for doing this... I hope! Richard
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Significance of the Statistical Frequency of Syllabograms in % according to Michael Ventris (1952) Michael Ventris was on to much more than even he imagined when he began to unravel the mysteries of the Linear B script by the spring of 1952, when he constructed the following table, in which he extrapolated the statistical frequency in percentage (%) of most of the syllabograms [Click to ENLARGE]:What he didn't realize then, and what has become not only apparent but of paramount importance to myself and, I sincerely hope, to other researchers in the field of Linear B today is that most of the syllabograms with high or moderate frequencies (in %) play an enormous role in the progressive-regressive reconstruction of Mycenaean grammar and vocabulary alike. I cannot stress this point too much. Some syllabograms, in fact, play such a decisive role in the grammar and vocabulary of Mycenaean Greek that they cannot be safely ignored in the reconstruction of the language. Of these, for the time being, the most significant for our purposes are, above all, JO (genitive sing. masc. & neut. adjs. & nouns) and SI (dative plural & endings for several forms of verb conjugations, as well as U (nom. sing. masc. nouns), YA (fem. sing. nom. & gen. adjs. & nouns), TA (fem. sing. nom. & neut. pl. nom.) and TE (verb conjugations). Keep posted for our analyses of the contextual significance of each of these syllabograms in turn, beginning with the 2 most relevant to the reconstruction of both Mycenaean grammar & vocabulary, i.e. JO & SI. We shall address the rest of the high and moderate frequency syllabograms late this year. Richard
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KEY POST! Complete Conjugations in the Active Voice of Thematic Verbs in Mycenaean Linear B (Click to ENLARGE):It is of vital importance to researchers and serious students of Mycenaean Linear B grammar to carefully read and study this post, as it serves as the basis and starting point for the complete reconstruction of both Mycenaean Linear B grammar & vocabulary, following the tenets of my Theory of Regressive-Progressive Linear B Grammar, by the end of 2015. This reconstruction encompasses, but is not necessarily limited to, the recovery of: 1 All tenses in all voices of Mycenaean verbs, active, middle & passive, and of the optative and (possibly) the subjunctive moods. 2 The recovery of as much of the system of participles as can be reasonably achieved. 3 The restoration of as many adverbs as can be reasonably expected. 4 The restoration of the first, second & third declensions of adjectives and nouns, in so far and to the extent that this is feasible. There are several roadblocks and gaping holes in declensions which I will address later this year or early in 2015. 5 The use of prepositions and the cases they govern. 6 Any other aspects of Mycenaean grammar which I have not addressed here. 7 A considerable increase in the corpus of Mycenaean vocabulary, both attributed and derived, from the current 2,500 words or so to at least double that, i.e. at least 5,000 words. Richard
