Projects per year
Abstract
During the Bronze Age, the inhabitants of regions of Crete, mainland Greece, and Cyprus inscribed their languages using, among other scripts, a writing system called Linear A. These symbols, mainly characterized by combinations of lines, have, since their discovery, remained a mystery. Not only is the corpus very small, but it is challenging to link Minoan, the language behind Linear A, to any known language. Most decipherment attempts involve using the phonetic values of Linear B, a grammatological offspring of Linear A, to ‘read’ Linear A. However, this yields meaningless words. Recently, novel approaches to deciphering the script have emerged which involve a computational component. In this paper, two such approaches are combined to account for the biases involved in provisionally assigning Linear B phonetic values to Linear A and to shed more light on the possible connections of Linear A with other scripts and languages from the region. Additionally, the limitations inherent in such approaches are discussed. Firstly, a feature-based similarity measure is used to compare Linear A with the Carian Alphabet and the Cypriot Syllabary. A few Linear A symbols are matched with symbols from the Carian Alphabet and the Cypriot Syllabary. Finally, using the derived phonetic values, Linear A is compared with Ancient Egyptian, Luwian, Hittite, Proto-Celtic, and Uralic using a consonantal approach. Some possible word matches are identified from each language.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 73 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-13 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Information (Switzerland) |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 25 Jan 2024 |
Keywords
- Linear A
- Language Decipherment
- Computational Linguistics
- Historical Linguistics
- Minoan
- computational linguistics
- cryptanalysis
- language decipherment
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Minoan Cryptanalysis: Computational Approaches to Deciphering Linear A and Assessing Its Connections with Language Families from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea Areas'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Giving Voice to the Minoan People: The Decipherment of Linear A
1/01/18 → 31/08/21
Project: Internal Research Project
Activities
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Clusters and Syllabo-logographical Classification Models in Linear A/B Tablets: Lexical and Visual Analogies for a More Comprehensive Study of Their Properties and Advanced Bronze Age Trading-diplomatical Correspondences
Francesco PERONO CACCIAFOCO (Invited speaker) & Alexandre SOLCÀ (Invited speaker)
23 Oct 2024Activity: Talk or presentation › Presentation at conference/workshop/seminar
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School of Humanities and Social Sciences (Organisational unit)
Francesco PERONO CACCIAFOCO (Member)
16 Oct 2024 → …Activity: Membership › Membership of committee
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