Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
greekreporter.com
Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
1–10 of 92 posts
Re: Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
#2Article from 2021, duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27191364
Re: Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
#3>I am afraid there is currently no exact translation of the sign-sequences (= words) attested on Linear A tablets (as well as other document types). This is primarily because we have not yet identified the linguistic family the Minoan language belongs to (unless it has to be taken as an ‘isolated’ language)
Seems as though they may have made some kind of advancement in the relationship between symbols, but as always we do not have nearly enough written material to approach deciphering.
Re: Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
#4This 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/
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.
Re: Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
#5This 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/ This will be a great resource and is an important work, but it appe…
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?
Re: Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
#6Work has been done on using Markov models etc to predict missing symbols in these texts. But it feels like with all the data now available, and the fact that some signs' meanings are known, we must be able to at least reduce the constellation of possible meanings of some of the unknown signs. There are only so many things it was possible to say about olives in the ancient world, and presumably the semantic space wouldn't be so different to other vaguely contemporaneous languages (not just Linear B). Does anybody know of any work in this direction?
Re: Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
#7This 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/ This will be a great resource and is an important work, but it appe…
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?
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.
Re: Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
#8I spent basically the entire article trying to figure out what the "groundbreaking" research actually was... this is a pretty mangled press release rendering of the scientific research, even worse than the kinds you normally see from university research.
To its credit, this doesn't promise that we can (or will shortly be able to) actually read Linear A texts, and it actually explicates that we won't be able to do that. But that's pretty much the limit of credit due to this article.
Linear A's connection to Linear B has been hypothesized since... well, at least as far back as when I was taught it in school, which considering how long it takes textbooks to update themselves to state-of-the-art archaeology may as well be time immemorial.
What it looks like the actual "groundbreaking" research here is, based on the sleuthing done in the previous version of the article that leads to an academic review of the work in question (here: https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2021/2021.04.30/). The layman's version is that it's a detailed analysis of the structural elements of the script to propose how the (unknown) language was encoded into Linear A, combined with some analysis of how individual glyphs varied in time and space--and this results in the conclusion that Linear B is actually a version of a regional [script, not linguistic] dialect of Linear A that was used to write a different language.
Re: Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
#9This 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/ This will be a great resource and is an important work, but it appe…
https://lineara.xyz/ is also worth a look
Re: Minoan language Linear A linked to Linear B in new research
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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.
> 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?