Talk:Mycenaean Greek language

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[edit] i want to add a important link, but

i had tried to add a new link, that is considerable important for this article and the Lineal B article, but, a stupid bot, deleted it several times. i give you the link for your consideration, that i think, and many of us i suppost, is extremely relevant:

Glossary of Linear B —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hans soplopuco (talk • contribs) 19:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

The publication of the Thebes tablets (L. Godart and A. Sacconi, 2002) was long anticipated, and their actual content was rather disappointing compared to what had been hinted at by the editors in the previous years. This is less than informative for the Wikipedia reader. Anyone? --Wetman 05:24, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

um, yeah, it was supposed to summarize Thebes tablets. Change it as you see fit. dab (ᛏ) 08:47, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Wish you would. I'm not competent. I haven't even read the stuff about the Thebes tablets. I'll see if I can find some Internet references to add there, but I wish you'd just give us "50 words or less." --Wetman 08:50, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)
it caused somewhat of a stir among the experts, and I wanted to hint at that. It was widely felt that Godart&Saconi pretended to sit on the holy grail of Greek linguistics for several years, and what they finally turned out to have been sitting on was very interesting, but not really that special. It's a matter of modern academia, not of the ancient mycenaeans themselves. I don't really think it deserves more than a sentence or two, but it would be nice to have a reference to is (it's something the Britannica will be too slow to cover :) dab (ᛏ) 09:10, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] On "Z" Transcription

(comment revised)

I have removed the text: "(the latter may represent a cluster zd corresponding to greek Zeta)".

The phonetic value of the sign transcribed as "z" is not certain, but definitely not /zd/.

Whatever the phoneme was, it usually ended up in alphabetic Greek *as* Zeta, and this is the reason the "z" transcription is used -- as a kind of place-holder for the uncertain Mycenaean phoneme.

And even in early alphabetic Greek, Zeta does not represent /zd/, but rather (most likely) /dz/. /zd/ is a later metathesis (in some dialects) of the /dz/ phoneme and in no way relevant to Mycenaean.

I can't figure out how to get that into the article -- plus a needed discussion on 'q' -- briefly and coherently. I have some vague plan to come back to this with charts and such...

[edit] Mycenaean "language"?

Why is the title of this article not Mycenaean Greek?

Also, is it certain that Linear B was invented on Crete, as the introduction states? It obviously derives from Linear A, but does that allows us to say the script was invented on Crete? --Akhilleus (talk) 13:52, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing to fit the more general WP naming policy, namely that the adjective disambigs to 'adjective language' and the other uses: cf English. It could be argued that Mycenaean Greek is POV (granted there are only about ten scholars alive that dispute that LinB is Greek). Thing is, Mediaeval has to be Mediaeval Greek, because Mediaeval is just a generic period: there was Mediaeval French, English, etc. Mycenaean stands more or less on its own: There is no Mycenaean Latin. --Nema Fakei 17:56, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough, but we have Ancient Greek, Koine Greek, Ionic Greek, Homeric Greek, Doric Greek etc. so whatever the general policy is, it seems better to title this article along the lines of the other articles about Greek dialects. I suppose this isn't very important, because Mycenaean Greek is a redirect to Mycenaean language, but this kind of inconsistency gets under my skin. --Akhilleus (talk) 19:31, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I know what you mean, and to be honest, I agree. But the article can't be moved by ordinary editors, since because Mycenaean Greek is a redirect and therefore not blank.--Nema Fakei 23:51, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Corpus of Greek vs. Corpus of Linear B

I've moved the "Corpus" specifics over to the Linear B article. Someone might, for instance, uncover at Lesbos a Greek-language incantation to Smintheus in Luwiyan cuneiform. A Linear B corpus is a script-dependent corpus. Hate to be pedantic, but... (Zimriel 00:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Cases in Mycenean

The standard view is that even the Proto-Greek language had five cases. So, even if someone claims that Mycenean had 7 cases, we ca n not include such claims, especially in the lead.--Michkalas 20:28, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

But the user Macrakis has referenced it. What evidence is there that the standard view is that it had five cases only? Thulium 20:32, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

For instance in Kopidakis "History of the Greek Languaged" it is stated:
“

The proto-Hellenic dialect retained several much earlier traits and traces, such as a variety of vowels, mobility of the clauses of a sentence and facility in the formation of new words. At the same time, it also created plentiful neologisms. Its only ending consonants were -ν, ρ and ς (γάλα < γάλακτ, cf. γάλακτος). The accent did not ascend beyond the antepenultimate syllable (according to the rule of trisyllaby). The eight cases were reduced to five, as the locative and the instrumental were assimilated into the dative, while the genitive was assimilated with the ablative.

 ”
[1]
It compares proto-Greek with Proto-Indo-European. --Michkalas 20:47, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I haven't really got time to go over this now. Evidently it's disputed/uncertain whether Mycenaean Greek inflected in that way. I like the way it's put here [2]

“ Meillet (1913) stressed the loss of the spatial (ablative, instrumental, and locative) cases, which he called ‘one of the traits that characterize Common Greek’ (1913 [1975], 46); these categories survived in no Greek dialect known in 1913. While the Mycenaean case system is still controversial in part, Hajnal (1995) argues that the instrumental and locative cases both survived and that in a major inflectional class, animate a thematic consonant stem nouns, the only case‑marking change from PNIE to Mycenaean was a dative‑locative plural syncretism. The new ending ‑si (vs earlier loc. pl. *‑su) shows the only clear nominal form‑change that is both unique to Greek and pan‑Greek, but it is a trivial adaptation based on loc. sg. ‑i and instr. pl. ‑phi with final i. The loss of the ablative had begun in IE inasmuch as its forms were parasitic on the genitive in the singular and on the dative in the plural; since the Greek genitive expresses ablative functions, the loss of the ablative can be viewed as an extension of the singular syncretism into the plural. The inflectional system of the Proto‑Greek noun thus differed only marginally from that of its PNIE ancestor. ”

If you can think of a better way of writing it in the article, go ahead please. Thulium 21:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I do no see why we have to write it in the article. It is an academic opinion, Hajanl's, but it is not widely accepted.--Michkalas 21:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I do no see why we have to write it in the article
We have to write it in the article because it's relevant and sourced. There are many possible ways of saying it to accommodate your concerns. As there are many fringe theories floating around Wikipedia (e.g. Borza re XMK), I hardly think including this non-political one will bring the cosmos to an end. Thulium 21:54, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

According to the "history" of the page, you have added this claim. So maybe you can find also a way to fit it somewhere, but, please, after the standard academic view and stating also that the more than 5 cases view is not widely held. If it stays as it is, no doubt, it will be neither the end of the world nor the first inaccurate thing in WP. --Michkalas 22:22, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

First of all, Meillet is hardly relevant to the discussion, since he was writing long before Mycenean writing (Linear B) was deciphered. I honestly don't know what the various scholarly positions are on the matter today, but Hajnal is the director (Prodekan) of the philology department of the University of Münster, and specializes in Mycenaean. In fact, he has written a book specifically on the Mycenaean case system: Studien zum mykenischen Kasussystem. Andrew Garrett is a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and has worked quite a bit on Indo-European. So you can't just dismiss them! Hajnal and Garrett's work may be too recent to have been discussed in Kopidakis.

As for the Kopidakis quote, it is from the introduction to his book, and the phrase "the eight cases were reduced to five" is unclear about when in the transition from IE to Proto-Greek/Mycenaean. It is also unclear from this text how he sees the relationship between Mycenaean Greek and Proto-Greek.

So as far as I can tell from the (thin) evidence so far, it is clear that some serious scholars believe that Mycenaean had 7 cases, and it is unclear what exactly Kopidakis believes. --Macrakis 23:05, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

It is not unclear. The quote refers exactly to the differeces between Pro-Indo-European and Proto-Greek (i.e. one stage before Mycenean).--Michkalas 23:10, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Even so, it still is notable enough to be mentioned. Thulium 23:50, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Currently the lede says:
Unlike later varieties of Greek, Mycenaean Greek probably had seven grammatical cases, the nominative, the genitive, the accusative, the instrumental, the locative, and the vocative.
There are only six cases listed here. What is the seventh? Hairy Dude 19:59, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conservapedia

There's an interesting Conservapedia article on this language. Should we maybe also mention this irredentism? ;-) Ucucha 15:40, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Ucucha, why are you, as a good evolutionist, hanging out on Conservapedia anyway :-)? Seems they normalized the article in the mean time, though it still sounds "biblical" (course it does). Perhaps that stupid phrase was added by a liberal intrigant. There seem to be a lot of left wing trolls there writing sheer nonsense in order to destabilise it ... well, whatever... Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 17:36, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Syllabary

Hi, to my surprise I saw question marks in the phonology section, apparently in places where you are supposed to see letters. That means the Linear B syllabary has been included in Unicode. Great, but can someone give me a link where I can obtain these fonts? I'd like to write an article on Mycenaean on the Limburgish Wikipedia so having such fonts would be very convenient. Steinbach (fka Caesarion) 17:36, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at Talk:Linear_B#Technical_assistance.3F. Note that Internet Explorer 6 apparently will not display these characters properly even if you have the correct fonts installed. --Akhilleus (talk) 17:39, 25 August 2007 (UTC)