The Pelasgian Pre-Greek Substrate and the Linear A

The Pelasgian Pre Pre--Greek -Greek Substrate

 Arnaud Fournet

The document summarizes the main information available on the Pelasgian Pre-Greek substrates that are known to have existed in Greece's mainland and islands before the Greek language, a variety of Central Indo-European, became the vernacular. The conclusion is that the Aegean Sea has always been a purely Indo-European area. The document proposes some emendations to the current decipherment of Linear A.

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The retreat of the Unbeknownst

Not infrequently proto-languages have been located in unfavorable environments : deserts, poles, steppes, mountains, all kinds of areas perfectly unsuitable for the emergence of a huge and developed population, as if homelands of proto-languages were all the more probable because they are as thinly people and as undocumented as possible. Hypothesizing whatever sub-branch of X-o-Y-ic in Libya is indeed the cleverest strategy to make sure the idea will not be refuted by adverse traces of human presence. On the other end of the spectrum, areas like Ancient Greece and Anatolia were dismissed by the nascent Indo-European scholarship as possible homeland of the PIE language because they were perceived as harboring brilliant civilizations but of unknown linguistic ethnoculture.   As the progress of knowledge has shown for two centuries, Greece and Asia Minor, which were previously thought of unknown linguistic origin, have only revealed languages with clear and fullfledged Indo-European origin. There is in fact no place left for any Pelasgo-Etruscomaniac fancies because the area is basically Indo-European. The only residual area of unclear status is Crete with a resisting Linear A script so far. Our conviction is that this resistance will not last for ever. The first advance in the knowledge of this area was the decipherment of cuneiform script and then the gradual realization that Hittite and the other western Anatolian languages, Lydian, Lycian, etc., were Indo-European. This understanding was first suggested at the beginning of the XXth century and was later established by Bedŕich Hrozný in 1914 and confirmed by Jerzy Kuryłowicz.

Map of the Anatolian Indo-European languages

The next advance was achieved with the decipherment of Linear B script in 1952 by Michael Ventris with the help of John Chadwick. It became then clear that the Greek Islands, especially Crete and part of the mainland (in blue color below) had been peopled by the speakers of an early Greek dialect : Mycenean Greek. The mystery of a Minoan unknown civilization could then be discarded. The area was Greek-speaking as early as -1450 BC.

Map of the Greek dialects

The Greek language, represented by its numerous dialects, is not the first Indo-European language spoken in Greece. They are plenty of indications, both direct and indirect, that another language was there before. Greek came from the North-East of Greece and represents an intrusion of Central IndoEuropean, which happened sometimes between -2200 and -1500 BC. The previous language, which was spoken before Greek prevailed, can be called either Pelasgian or Pre-Greek. It will be called PreGreek in the following pages. It has been well-known since Antiquity that an obscure people called Pelasgians by Herodotus and Homer had once inhabited Crete, the Peloponnesus and the Attic peninsula. The linguistic study of the Pre-Greek language owes much to the efforts of Kuiper, who wrote a study on Greek substratum words in 1956, of Furnée who wrote a dissertation on the subject in 1972, and of Beekes, who is the foremost specialist of the Pre-Greek issue, since that time. The document is based on an analysis and assessment of Beekes' current work.

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The linguistic features of Pre-Greek

It has become increasingly clear that the substratic Pre-Greek words of the Greek vocabulary are not an incoherent hotchpotch of words but add up to a language with typical and describable features. The vowels, consonants and lexical morphology can be inferred from the huge set of words that have made their way from Pre-Greek into Greek. Close to one thousand words are potentially Pre-Greek.

The vowel system

Contrary to Greek, the phonological system of Pre-Greek was composed of a rather limited number  of vowels and these phonemes were precisely not the most frequent vowels inherited by Greek from Central IE. The distributional analysis of the suffixes of Pre-Greek shows that only *a / *i / *u exist. For  example, the following suffixes can be found in Pre-Greek loanwords : *a

amb

ant (rare)

*i *u

umb

unt (rare)

and

anth

aŋg

ind

inth

iŋg

und

unth (rare)

uŋg

Distribution of the vowels in the Pre-Greek suffixes

The same situation exists with unnasalized suffixed. On the whole, *e and *o are rare in the PreGreek loanwords and nearly never found in the suffixes. This feature leads Beekes to conclude that the system only included */a/, */i/ and */u/. There is nevertheless a potential counter-argument in the reasoning. If the suffixes were always unstressed, then what we have is a reduced unaccented system but the accented system may have been richer. The prosody of Pre-Greek remains to be studied but from some words, ábramis ~ ábramis  ~ abramís , ákhuros ~ ákhuros  ~ akhurós , korúdalos ~ korúdalos  ~ korudallós , síkuos ~ síkuos  ~ sikuós , it seems that the position of pitch (or accent) in Pre-Greek had no fixed position. This is an argument in favor of the reduced system of vowels. But our opinion is that the limited set of vowels can also be inferred from the graphic structure of  Linear B itself and of the cypriot syllabary as well.

The graphic internal structure of Linear B

 A conspicuous feature of Linear B is the massive inadequation of the set of syllables to transcribe Greek. This situation obviously originates in the linguistic differences between Greek and Pre-Greek, for which the system was most probably designed. If the phonemic inventory of Pre-Greek was only *a, *i, *u, we should expect the graphic system to have only three series of syllables and not five : only ta , ti , tu should tu should exist and te , to should to should not exist. They are nevertheless there. This suggests the hypothesis that new syllables new  syllables were added to the Pre-Greek system when it got adapted to write (Mycenean) Greek. As we will see, the symbols to write *e and *o are indeed variants

The Cypriot Syllabary displays shared tendencies with Linear B : tu  and to  are obviously related. But the syllables for *e seem to be derived from *a, not from *i, as shown by ma  ~ me . Moreover  yi  Moreover  yi  and ki seem ki seem much closer to ya  to  ya and and ka than ka than to ye  to ye and and ke . The creation of that graphic system seems to be significantly independent from the Linear B system. But it indicates the same kind of substrate : the previous language had only three vowels when Greek had five and adjustements were made.

The conclusion that Pre-Greek had only three vowels seems extremely solidly established. Another  conclusion is that Pelasgian Pre-Greek had no relationship with Etruscan, which had four vowels, instead on three.

The system of consonants

From the Greek point of view, Linear B is a very traumatic system which notes the three series of  phonemes with only one set of signs. Voiced, voiceless and aspirate phonemes are not distinguished by the graphic system. This raises the issue of knowing what kind of phonological contrast Pre-Greek might have had. The failure to provide any choice between voiced, voiceless and aspirate suggests that neither voice nor aspiration were existing in Pre-Greek. Moreover, only a few Pre-Greek loanwords have -h-. This is another sign that aspiration played only a limited role in Pre-Greek.  Anatolian Indo-European seems to have had a contrast between weak simple ~ strong geminate. But Pelasgian Pre-Greek words hardly ever display any gemination. The most frequent ones are -ll-, -nn-, rr-, -ss-, which can be of Greek origin. The existence of some kind of contrast is nevertheless made sure by a double set of signs that distinguish Greek /d/ ~ Greek /t/. If the distinctive feature was not voice , then a reasonable idea was that it was glottalic . There were two sets of consonants in Pre-Greek : glottalic and voiceless. And it seems reasonable to think this situation existed for velars, dentals, fricatives and maybe also laterals. Labials do not seem to be attested. It is intriguing that some inscriptions are written instead of   just . Another telling point is that the Semitic letter San [sˀ], emphatic fricative, was used in some areas in Greece. And it is also worth nothing that the so-called western Greek alphabets, from Corinth for example, are those who use both San and Qoppa. It is most probably not a chance coincidence that Pre-Greek was precisely spoken there at an earlier period. Voiceless Pre-Greek phonemes were adopted as voiceless. And the double adaptation as /d/ or  /th/, that happens in many words, signals that (Old) Greek speakers perceived a particular feature that they could not reproduce correctly : glottalization. If this is true, and if Pre-Greek had two sets of  phonemes, then there is no reason why these two sets of phonemes could not be properly written by the graphic system and we should be able to determine a double set of phonemes, one voiceless and one glottalic, for each articulation that Pre-Greek had. Beekes suggests that Pre-Greek had a set of labialized consonants and we agree. He also suggests a set of palatalized consonants, we disagree and think this is based on erroneous values of  the signs.

The following signs have unknown value : AB

34, ,

49,

82,

86,

301, hu

11. It

seems plausible that they may represent two series *rwa and *rˀwa.

The Linear A script seems to be a complete autochthonous invention using the usual acrophonic value of the first initial of words of the language : - au

85 < *auros 'bull',

- ma

80 < Hieroglyphic *060

supposed to be a cat face, but in fact, the meaning 'sheep'

seems much better. Cf. Greek mēlo- 'sheep'. This word is attested with /a/ instead of /e/, in some other Indo-European languages, i.e. Armenian, Slavic or Germanic, - mu - gi

23 < Hieroglyphic *012 67 < Hieroglyphic *057

supposed to be a cattle-head, Cf. moskhos 'calf', moskhos 'calf', supposed to be a key sistrum, Cf. kithara 'lyre', kithara 'lyre',

Conclusion

We do not have the necessary expertise nor time to find which of these rare signs would better  match which phonetic value. We are convinced that our emendations will bring some light on PreGreek inscriptions that will ultimately lead to the full recognition that Pelasgian Pre-Greek is a third branch of Indo-European, with Anatolian Indo-European and Non-Anatolian (Northern) Indo-European. It is worth noting that these three branches of Indo-European used to have their own tutelar god : - Zeus < *dyew-s, for the Greek invaders, who spoke a variety Central northern IE, - Apollôn < unvocalized APLOWN *ˀ_p_l_ˁ_w_n *ˀapo-liˀōn, an Anatolian Indo-European god, - Poseidôn < *potis-Idaōn 'master of the Ida', the tutelar god of the Pre-Greeks.

There is little doubt that the PIE homeland is to be found somewhere around the Aegian Sea.

Pelasgian Pre-Greek with its peculiar conservation of a contrast between #C- and #Cˀ will probably be an new asset in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language.

 Annexes : Classification of the Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages as dealt with in the present document have the following traditional perimeter. We will not deal with some of our proposals of inclusion of languages, which are currently hold to be either isolates or not to be Indo-European. Our own classification is :  A. Anatolian. Now extinct since Late Antiquity. This is the earliest attested branch, mainly represented by Hittite texts from the 16th century BC in cuneiform writing.

B. Non-Anatolian. B1. Western Indo-European. B1.1. Albanian, attested only since the 15th century. Proto-Albanian may have emerged from Paleo-Balkanic predecessors, possibly related to the extinct and poorly known, Illyrian, Thracian and Dacian languages. The two present-day dialects of Albanian contain a huge amount of loanwords and the original vocabulary inherited from PIE is limited. B1.2. Italic, represented by Latin and the Romance languages, and the now extinct OscoO scoUmbrian sub-branch. Italy also has traces of languages like Venetic and Messapian, which are possibly Indo-European. B1.3. Celtic. The only present-day language with a significant number of speakers is Welsh. Gaulish inscriptions are dated from the 6th century BC onward, in Greek and Etruscan alphabets. The Old Irish manuscript tradition may be as early as the 8th century AD. B1.4. Nord-West-Block. Extinct since the expansion of Germanic but a detectable substrate. Other substrates are detectable. B2. Central Indo-European. B2.1. Greek. One of the earliest known IE language under the form of an indirect writing system (Linear B) as Mycenaean Greek. There used to be a large variety of Greek dialects. Greek is probably closely related to the extinct Phrygian language. B2.2. Armenian language. The Bible was translated in the language after an adequate alphabet was invented at the beginning of the 5th century AD. B2.3. Balto-Slavic. Slavic is attested since the 9th century with texts in Old Church Slavonic while Baltic is attested only since the 14th century. B2.4. Indo-Iranian. Numerically a very large part of the family, with four sub-branches : Indo  Aryan, Iranian, Dardic and Nuristani. Sanskrit is attested since the 3rd century BC, but the language of the Rig-Veda is older than this date thanks to a conservative oral transmission. Iranian is attested since about 520 BC in the form of Old Persian Behistun inscription, but the  Avestan language is equally older than this date. B3. Eastern Indo-European.

B3.1. Germanic. Includes the now hegemonic English language. The earliest documents are runic inscriptions from around the 2nd century AD and the translation of the Bible in Gothic, 4th century AD. B3.2. Tocharian. Represented by two extinct dialects, once spoken in Turkestan and attested from roughly the 6th to the 9th century AD.

C. Pelasgian C.1. Mainland Pelasgian C.2. Insular Pelasgian. Cretan.

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