Lin. A crocus

From: Ivanovas/Milatos
Message: 338
Date: 1999-11-24

��<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content="text/html; charset=unicode" http-equiv=Content-Type> <META content="MSHTML 5.00.2014.210" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Pjotr, you wrote:</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">>It's never a good idea to let your pet theory make you blind to other >possibilities. You WANT the Linear A language to be IE. </FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">You're absolutely right with this, and I wasn't really looking for hints to prove Lin.A an IE language - I was looking for the possible name of crocus.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">But in an IE discussion group it wouldn't make sense to ask for other possibilities, would it? I don't see much chance to 'decipher' Lin. A by a method like Ventris' for Lin. B, but it is certainly possible to find single words that make sense. And even an IE word here and there wouldn't prove anything for the rest of the language as it might be a loan-word from an IE neighbor! Gordon tried to prove Lin.A to be Semitic by showing the occurrence of obviously Semitic words (sesame etc.), but to me that just proves there are loan words.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">As for your acronyms, I seem to remember there was a word for wild fig tree beginning with <EM>ni</EM> (which I don't recall, sorry) and if I hear <EM>me </EM>for goat and<EM> mu</EM> for ox I'd rather think of an onomatopoetic syllable ...</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">There are some more possibilities for fitting acronyms that sound or look nice, E. Brown even attributed quite a lot to possible Luwian parallels, but his suggestions are too far fetched in most cases to be accepted (and Luwian is much younger, anyway ...)</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">From finding an Anatolian explanation for <EM>ra3 </EM>I'd rather suppose more close connections between Anatolia and Crete in the Bronze Age than just the simple IE stamp on Lin.A. And for some placenames I'd like to understand the connection between <EM>ra/la</EM> (may be pronounced with a very dark <EM>a/o </EM>in Minoan) and a word for red would really make sense.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Well, ars longa...</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Sabine</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>