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This article is a reasonable summary of the status quo in Linear A studies since 1956, but the reporter seemingly deliberately obfuscates the nature and scope o

This article is a reasonable summary of the status quo in Linear A studies since 1956, but the reporter seemingly deliberately obfuscates the nature and scope of Dr. Ester Salgarella's new contribution. It appears to be the creation of an online corpus in collaboration Dr. Simon Castellan, linked near the bottom of the article: https://sigla.phis.me/ https://sigla.phis.me/ This will be a great resource and is an important work, but it appears that today we are no closer to deciphering Linear A than we have ever been.

mwenge 4y ago
https://lineara.xyz/ https://lineara.xyz/ is also worth a look
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  That's cool as hell (note that https://linearb.xyz https://linearb.xyz also exists.)
Radim 4y ago
I don't know about "deliberately". Might be just a confused, inarticulate piece by a confused reporter. When an article opens with "the Minoan language known as Linear A" (no, it's a script) and "Linear B developed later in the prehistoric period" (an oxymoron, prehistoric = pre-literary)… you know not to expect much. Did anyone manage to parse out what is even being claimed in this article?
- jnwatson 4y ago
  The author found a relationship between Linear B (the script) and Linear A (the script) to the point of being able to approximately pronounce Linear A. The actual language written in that Linear A script, Minoan, is still unknown, but this provides some important tools to better understand it.
  - tremon 4y ago
    If we don't know the language it's encoding, how do we know the Linear A pronunciation is correct, approximately or not? Is this done purely on the assumption that Linear A and Linear B might encode similar phonemes in a similar way?
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    > The author found a relationship between Linear B (the script) and Linear A (the script) to the point of being able to approximately pronounce Linear A. Except that has been known for like... 50 years? 60 years?
    - adrian_b 4y ago
      Exactly as you say, the fact that many signs are shared by Linear B and Linear A has been known for at least a half of century. What I understand from the review of the book is that after a more thorough analysis of the graphic variations of various Linear A signs, many more signs inherited by Linear B from Linear A have been identified than before. Having better and more phonetic readings of Linear A texts increases the hope that the Minoan language could be identified and understood, even if this remains highly unlikely, unless more Linear A texts would be discovered.
- tlb 4y ago
  Is it not fair to call an society where writing existed but we can't read it prehistoric? From our perspective, we have no written history. Or is the distinction that they themselves could read it and therefore acted with historical awareness?
  - irrational 4y ago
    No. Was the Egyptian civilization (which lasted for 3000 years until the time of the Romans) prehistoric because we could not read the Egyptian hieroglyphics? Did it only cease to be prehistoric once we deciphered the language?
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Yes, exactly. Before we have written history is prehistory. As we get more history, the boundary of prehistory moves back. So most of the American remnants are prehistoric, despite being coeval with history in the "old world".
  - SiempreViernes 4y ago
    You'd have to give up the notion that "prehistoric" refers to some fixed moment in time, but other than that you are of course free to try to change it's meaning.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Absolutely. If we can read their script, and they wrote a history, we can read that history. Without, we are reduced to relying on archaeology. We can read historical texts from Egypt and Mesopotamia from the time the Minoans , er, "flourished". In exactly that sense they are not prehistoric. I think Egyptians mentioned them. (It seems odd if Egyptians did not mention Santorini blowing up and wiping them out, but maybe they did. Somebody must have mentioned "Thera".)
SemanticStrengh 4y ago
can't they use the zipf law ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law The decreasing exponential law should allow to find "the" and some closed form POS words, so yeah determiners, prepositions and conjonctions.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  The total extant corpus of Linear A amounts to fewer than 10,000 characters (and this is, I believe, the largest corpus of any undeciphered script). There's not enough text to do statistical analysis.
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    If all that text would have been that of a story, there would still have been a chance to decipher it. Even worse than the small number of texts is that all, or almost all, are just bookkeeping records, so they contain few words besides numbers, symbols for useful goods, e.g. wine, olive oil, barley, wool and so on, and proper names of places or people. So even if there might be a few hundreds of texts, most just reproduce the same phrases, only with different numbers and names substituted in them. Any statistics on this handful of stereotype phrases will offer no information about the statistics of the words of the Minoan language as used in a normal conversation or story telling.
- luma 4y ago
  Can we assume that any of those features would be part of this language?
  - SemanticStrengh 4y ago
    a language without thoses would be hella weird and primitive, like stereotypical robotic talking. To answer you question, I don't know, do linear B have them?
    - tgv 4y ago

mwenge 4y ago

https://lineara.xyz/ https://lineara.xyz/ is also worth a look

CamperBob2 4y ago
That's cool as hell (note that https://linearb.xyz https://linearb.xyz also exists.)

Radim 4y ago

I don't know about "deliberately". Might be just a confused, inarticulate piece by a confused reporter. When an article opens with "the Minoan language known as Linear A" (no, it's a script) and "Linear B developed later in the prehistoric period" (an oxymoron, prehistoric = pre-literary)… you know not to expect much. Did anyone manage to parse out what is even being claimed in this article?

jnwatson 4y ago
The author found a relationship between Linear B (the script) and Linear A (the script) to the point of being able to approximately pronounce Linear A. The actual language written in that Linear A script, Minoan, is still unknown, but this provides some important tools to better understand it.
- tremon 4y ago
  If we don't know the language it's encoding, how do we know the Linear A pronunciation is correct, approximately or not? Is this done purely on the assumption that Linear A and Linear B might encode similar phonemes in a similar way?
- jcranmer 4y ago
  > The author found a relationship between Linear B (the script) and Linear A (the script) to the point of being able to approximately pronounce Linear A. Except that has been known for like... 50 years? 60 years?
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    Exactly as you say, the fact that many signs are shared by Linear B and Linear A has been known for at least a half of century. What I understand from the review of the book is that after a more thorough analysis of the graphic variations of various Linear A signs, many more signs inherited by Linear B from Linear A have been identified than before. Having better and more phonetic readings of Linear A texts increases the hope that the Minoan language could be identified and understood, even if this remains highly unlikely, unless more Linear A texts would be discovered.
tlb 4y ago
Is it not fair to call an society where writing existed but we can't read it prehistoric? From our perspective, we have no written history. Or is the distinction that they themselves could read it and therefore acted with historical awareness?
- irrational 4y ago
  No. Was the Egyptian civilization (which lasted for 3000 years until the time of the Romans) prehistoric because we could not read the Egyptian hieroglyphics? Did it only cease to be prehistoric once we deciphered the language?
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Yes, exactly. Before we have written history is prehistory. As we get more history, the boundary of prehistory moves back. So most of the American remnants are prehistoric, despite being coeval with history in the "old world".
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  You'd have to give up the notion that "prehistoric" refers to some fixed moment in time, but other than that you are of course free to try to change it's meaning.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Absolutely. If we can read their script, and they wrote a history, we can read that history. Without, we are reduced to relying on archaeology. We can read historical texts from Egypt and Mesopotamia from the time the Minoans , er, "flourished". In exactly that sense they are not prehistoric. I think Egyptians mentioned them. (It seems odd if Egyptians did not mention Santorini blowing up and wiping them out, but maybe they did. Somebody must have mentioned "Thera".)

SemanticStrengh 4y ago

can't they use the zipf law ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law The decreasing exponential law should allow to find "the" and some closed form POS words, so yeah determiners, prepositions and conjonctions.

jcranmer 4y ago
The total extant corpus of Linear A amounts to fewer than 10,000 characters (and this is, I believe, the largest corpus of any undeciphered script). There's not enough text to do statistical analysis.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  If all that text would have been that of a story, there would still have been a chance to decipher it. Even worse than the small number of texts is that all, or almost all, are just bookkeeping records, so they contain few words besides numbers, symbols for useful goods, e.g. wine, olive oil, barley, wool and so on, and proper names of places or people. So even if there might be a few hundreds of texts, most just reproduce the same phrases, only with different numbers and names substituted in them. Any statistics on this handful of stereotype phrases will offer no information about the statistics of the words of the Minoan language as used in a normal conversation or story telling.
luma 4y ago
Can we assume that any of those features would be part of this language?
- SemanticStrengh 4y ago
  a language without thoses would be hella weird and primitive, like stereotypical robotic talking. To answer you question, I don't know, do linear B have them?
  - tgv 4y ago