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59-414: The tablets long remained undeciphered, and many languages were suggested for them, until Michael Ventris , building on the extensive work of Alice Kober , deciphered the script in 1952. The texts on the tablets are mostly lists and inventories. No prose narrative survives, much less myth or poetry. Still, much may be gleaned from these records about the people who produced them and about Mycenaean Greece,

118-518: A Greek word. This led to wider international collaboration with other classical scholars and between 1953 and 1956 Ventris and Chadwick published joint papers. This overturned Evans's theories of Minoan history by establishing that Cretan civilization, at least in the later periods associated with the Linear B tablets, had been part of Mycenean Greece . Ventris was awarded an OBE in 1955 for "services to Mycenaean paleography ." On September 6th, 1956,

177-612: A far more complicated set of declensions, where the suffixes (or prefixes, or infixes ) change depending on the gender of the noun , the quantity of the noun , and other possible factors. This complexity and the possible lengthening of words is one of the disadvantages of inflected languages. Notably, many of these languages lack articles . There may also be irregular nouns where the declensions are unique for each word (like irregular verbs with conjugation ). In inflected languages, other parts of speech such as numerals , demonstratives , adjectives, and articles are also declined. It

236-520: A group of academics to help him transcribe Linear B material. Amongst them were Dr. Kober and Ventris. Although they did not collaborate further, Kober's work was essential in providing the foundational understanding from which Ventris built his theories on Linear B. Comparing the Linear B tablets discovered on the Greek mainland, and noting that certain symbol groups appeared only in the Cretan texts, Ventris made

295-775: A healthy environment for Colonel Ventris. Young Michael started school in Gstaad , where classes were taught in French and German. He soon mastered the Swiss German dialect. A few weeks in Sweden after the Second World War enabled him to become competent in Swedish. His mother often spoke Polish and he was fluent in it by the age of eight. In 1931, the Ventris family returned home. From 1931 to 1935 Ventris

354-518: A key to decipherment. Although this proved incorrect, it was a link he continued to explore until the early 1950s. Shortly after Evans died, Alice Kober noted that certain words in Linear B inscriptions had changing word endings – perhaps declensions in the manner of Latin or Greek. Using this basis, Ventris constructed a series of grids associating the symbols on the tablets with consonants and vowels . While which consonants and vowels these were remained mysterious, Ventris learned enough about

413-532: A more complex example, the sentence: becomes nonsensical in English if the words are rearranged (because there are no cases): But if English were a highly inflected language, like Latin or some Slavic languages such as Croatian , both sentences could mean the same thing. They would both contain five nouns in five different cases: mum – vocative (hey!), dog – nominative (who?), boy – genitive (of whom?), cat – accusative (whom?), street – locative (where?);

472-724: A number of other grammatical categories . Meanwhile, the inflectional change of verbs is called conjugation . Declension occurs in many of the world's languages. It is an important aspect of language families like Quechuan (i.e., languages native to the Andes ), Indo-European (e.g. German , Icelandic , Irish , Lithuanian and Latvian , Slavic , Sanskrit , Latin , Ancient and Modern Greek , Albanian , Romanian , Kurdish , Classical and Modern Armenian ), Bantu (e.g. Swahili , Zulu , Kikuyu ), Semitic (e.g. Modern Standard Arabic ), Finno-Ugric (e.g. Hungarian , Finnish , Estonian ), and Turkic (e.g. Turkish ). Old English

531-508: Is agreed that Ancient Greeks had a "vague" idea of the forms of a noun in their language. A fragment of Anacreon seems to confirm this idea. Nevertheless, it cannot be concluded that the Ancient Greeks actually knew what the cases were. The Stoics developed many basic notions that today are the rudiments of linguistics . The idea of grammatical cases is also traced back to the Stoics, but it

590-694: Is almost entirely absent from Mycenaean Greek with only one known exception, 𐀀𐀟𐀈𐀐 , a-pe-do-ke ( PY Fr 1184), but even that appears elsewhere without the augment, as 𐀀𐀢𐀈𐀐 , a-pu-do-ke ( KN Od 681). The augment is sometimes omitted in Homer . Mycenaean had already undergone the following sound changes particular to the Greek language and so is considered to be Greek: The corpus of Mycenaean-era Greek writing consists of some 6,000 tablets and potsherds in Linear B, from LMII to LHIIIB . No Linear B monuments or non-Linear B transliterations have yet been found. The so-called Kafkania pebble has been claimed as

649-667: Is never regarded as declined in Modern English, although formally, the words that and possibly she correspond to forms of the predecessor of the ( sē m., þæt n., sēo f.) as it was declined in Old English. Just as verbs in Latin are conjugated to indicate grammatical information, Latin nouns and adjectives that modify them are declined to signal their roles in sentences. There are five important cases for Latin nouns: nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and ablative . Since

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708-819: Is not declined in Modern English. There are isolated situations where certain nouns may be modified to reflect gender, though not in a systematic fashion. Loan words from other languages, particularly Latin and the Romance languages, often preserve their gender-specific forms in English, e.g. alumnus (masculine singular) and alumna (feminine singular). Similarly, names borrowed from other languages show comparable distinctions: Andrew and Andrea , Paul and Paula , etc. Additionally, suffixes such as -ess , -ette , and -er are sometimes applied to create overtly gendered versions of nouns, with marking for feminine being much more common than marking for masculine. Many nouns can actually function as members of two genders or even all three, and

767-841: Is not observed in the Linear B corpus. While the use of Mycenaean Greek may have ceased with the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, some traces of it are found in the later Greek dialects. In particular, Arcadocypriot Greek is believed to be rather close to Mycenaean Greek; it was an ancient Greek dialect spoken in Arcadia (central Peloponnese ) and in Cyprus . Ancient Pamphylian also shows some similarity to Arcadocypriot and to Mycenaean Greek. Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Michael Ventris Michael George Francis Ventris , OBE ( / ˈ v ɛ n t r ɪ s / ; 12 July 1922 – 6 September 1956)

826-631: Is often restricted to specific contexts, depending on the dialect or the speaker. It is most typically used to refer to a single person of unknown gender (e.g. "someone left their jacket behind") or a hypothetical person where gender is insignificant (e.g. "If someone wants to, then they should"). Its use has expanded in recent years due to increasing social recognition of persons who do not identify themselves as male or female (see gender-nonbinary ). The singular they still uses plural verb forms, reflecting its origins. Some English adjectives and adverbs are declined for degree of comparison . The unmarked form

885-402: Is still not completely clear what the Stoics exactly meant with their notion of cases. In Modern English , the system of declensions is so simple compared to some other languages that the term declension is rarely used. Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by

944-417: Is subjective, and the objective whom (although it is increasingly common to use who for both). The one situation where gender is still clearly part of the English language is in the pronouns for the third person singular. Consider the following: The distinguishing of neuter for persons and non-persons is peculiar to English. This has existed since the 14th century. However, the use of singular they

1003-623: Is the positive form, such as quick . Comparative forms are formed with the ending -er ( quicker ), while superlative forms are formed with -est ( quickest ). Some are uncomparable; the remainder are usually periphrastic constructions with more ( more beautiful ) and most ( most modestly ). See degree of comparison for more. Adjectives are not declined for case in Modern English (though they were in Old English), nor number nor gender. The demonstrative determiners this and that are declined for number, as these and those . The article

1062-488: The ending -s (or -es ), whereas possession is always shown by the en clitic -'s or, for plural forms ending in s , by just an apostrophe. Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl . Most speakers pronounce all forms other than the singular plain form ( girl ) exactly the same. By contrast, a few irregular nouns (like man /men) are slightly more complex in their forms. In this example, all four forms are pronounced distinctly. For nouns, in general, gender

1121-495: The locative , the instrumental form of "down our street" could also be used: Different word orders preserving the original meaning are possible in an inflected language, while modern English relies on word order for meaning, with a little flexibility. This is one of the advantages of an inflected language. The English sentences above, when read without the made-up case suffixes, are confusing. These contrived examples are relatively simple, whereas actual inflected languages have

1180-501: The same word , and thus are not declensions. Pronouns in English have more complex declensions. For example, the first person " I ": Whereas nouns do not distinguish between the subjective (nominative) and objective (oblique) cases, some pronouns do; that is, they decline to reflect their relationship to a verb or preposition , or case . Consider the difference between he (subjective) and him (objective), as in "He saw it" and "It saw him"; similarly, consider who , which

1239-453: The vocative case usually takes the same form as the nominative, it is seldom spelt out in grammar books. Yet another case, the locative , is limited to a small number of words. The usual basic functions of these cases are as follows: The genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative also have important functions to indicate the object of a preposition. Given below is the declension paradigm of Latin puer 'boy' and puella 'girl': From

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1298-416: The "Special Mycenaean" represented some local vernacular dialect (or dialects) of the particular scribes producing the tablets. Thus, "a particular scribe, distinguished by his handwriting, reverted to the dialect of his everyday speech" and used the variant forms, such as the examples above. It follows that after the collapse of Mycenaean Greece, while the standardized Mycenaean language was no longer used,

1357-578: The 34-year-old Ventris, who lived in Hampstead , drove to his in-laws home late at night to retrieve his wallet. On the way home, he died instantly in a collision in Hatfield, Hertfordshire , after striking a parked lorry parked in a lay-by on the side of the road. The coroner's verdict was accidental death. In 1959 Ventris was posthumously awarded the British Academy's Kenyon Medal . Initially there

1416-487: The Greek alphabet. There were at least five vowels /a e i o u/ , which could be both short and long. As noted below, the syllabic Linear B script used to record Mycenaean is extremely defective and distinguishes only the semivowels ⟨j w⟩ ; the sonorants ⟨m n r⟩ ; the sibilant ⟨s⟩ ; the stops ⟨p t d k q z⟩ ; and (marginally) ⟨h⟩ . Voiced, voiceless and aspirate occlusives are all written with

1475-497: The Knossos site. Evans had gifted them the site with his Villa Ariadne house some years previously. Boys from Stowe School were in attendance at one lecture and tour conducted by the 85-year-old Evans himself. Ventris, aged 14 at the time, was present and remembered Evans walking with a stick, probably the cane named Prodger which Evans carried all his life to assist him with his short-sightedness and night blindness. Evans held up tablets of

1534-414: The Linear B script only fully represents open syllables (those ending in vowel sounds), where Mycenaean Greek frequently used closed syllables (those ending in consonants). Orthographic simplifications therefore had to be made: Certain characters can be used alternately: for example, 𐀀 , a , can always be written wherever 𐁀 , a 2 , can. However, these are not true homophones (characters with

1593-491: The Ministry of Education. He and his wife personally designed their family home, 19 North End, Hampstead . Ventris and his wife had two children: a son, Nikki (1942–1984), and a daughter, Tessa (born 1946). Ventris continued with his efforts on Linear B, discovering in 1952 that it was an archaic form of Greek. At the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologist Arthur Evans began excavating an ancient site at Knossos , on

1652-536: The University of Cambridge who had been involved in code breaking at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. The two men began to collaborate on further research into deciphering Linear B. In 1953 further Linear B tablets were discovered at ancient Mycenae and ancient Pylos on the Greek mainland, with one of the tablets ( PY Ta 641 ) showing a pictographic tripod cauldron next to Linear B symbols which were translated by Ventris and Chadwick as "ti-ri-po-de", tripod being

1711-442: The adjective little would be in the same case as the noun it modifies ( boy ), and the case of the determiner our would agree with the case of the noun it determines ( street ). Using the case suffixes invented for this example, the original sentence would read: And like other inflected languages, the sentence rearranged in the following ways would mean virtually the same thing, but with different expressiveness: Instead of

1770-447: The diagnostic criteria to reconstruct two dialects within Mycenaean. In particular, more recent paleographical study, not available to Risch, shows that no individual scribe consistently writes "Special Mycenaean" forms. This inconsistency makes the variation between "Normal Mycenaean" and "Special Mycenaean" unlikely to represent dialectical or sociolectical differences, as these would be expected to concentrate in individual speakers, which

1829-505: The estate. With the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Dora lost her private income, and in 1940 her father died. Ventris lost his mother to clinical depression and an overdose of barbiturates . He never spoke of her, assuming instead an ebullient and energetic manner in whatever he decided to do, a trait which won him numerous friends. A friend of the family, Russian sculptor Naum Gabo , took Ventris under his wing. Ventris later said that Gabo

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1888-450: The fall of the palaces because the script was no longer used, the underlying dialects would have continued to develop in their own ways. That view was formulated by Antonin Bartonek. Other linguists like Leonard Robert Palmer and Yves Duhoux  [ de ] also support this view of the 'Mycenaean linguistic koine'. (The term 'Mycenaean koine' is also used by archaeologists to refer to

1947-469: The gender classes of English nouns are usually determined by their agreement with pronouns, rather than marking on the nouns themselves. There can be other derivations from nouns that are not considered declensions. For example, the proper noun Britain has the associated descriptive adjective British and the demonym Briton . Though these words are clearly related, and are generally considered cognates , they are not specifically treated as forms of

2006-407: The inspired guess that those were place names on the island. This proved to be correct. Armed with the symbols he could decipher from this, Ventris soon unlocked much of the text and determined that the underlying language of Linear B, a syllabic script , was in fact Greek. On 1 July 1952, Ventris announced his preliminary findings on a BBC radio talk which was heard by John Chadwick , a classicist at

2065-662: The island of Crete . In doing so he uncovered a great many clay tablets inscribed with two unknown scripts, Linear A and Linear B . Evans attempted to decipher both in the following decades, with little success. In 1936, Evans hosted an exhibition on Cretan archaeology at Burlington House in London, home of the Royal Academy . It was the jubilee anniversary (50 years) of the British School of Archaeology in Athens , owners and managers of

2124-407: The last half of the 15th century BCE and the earliest years of the 14th. While the Mycenaean dialect is relatively uniform at all the centres where it is found, there are also a few traces of dialectal variants: Based on such variations, Ernst Risch (1966) postulated the existence of some dialects within Linear B. The "Normal Mycenaean" would have been the standardized language of the tablets, and

2183-453: The material culture of the region.) However, since the Linear B script does not indicate several possible dialectical features, such as the presence or absence of word-initial aspiration and the length of vowels, it is unsafe to extrapolate that Linear B texts were read as consistently as they were written. The evidence for "Special Mycenaean" as a distinct dialect has, however, been challenged. Thompson argues that Risch's evidence does not meet

2242-513: The oldest known Mycenaean inscription, with a purported date to the 17th century BC. However, its authenticity is widely doubted, and most scholarly treatments of Linear B omit it from their corpora. The earliest generally-accepted date for a Linear B tablet belongs to the tablets from the 'Room of the Chariot Tablets' at Knossos, which are believed to date to the LM II-LM IIIA period, between

2301-421: The particular local dialects reflecting local vernacular speech would have continued, eventually producing the various Greek dialects of the historic period. Such theories are also connected with the idea that the Mycenaean language constituted a type of a special koine representing the official language of the palace records and the ruling aristocracy. When the 'Mycenaean linguistic koine' fell into disuse after

2360-412: The period before the so-called Greek Dark Ages . Mycenaean preserves some archaic Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Greek features not present in later ancient Greek : The consonant usually transcribed z probably represents *dy, initial *y, *ky, *gy. It is uncertain how it was pronounced. It may have represented a pair of voiceless and voiced affricates / ts / and / dz / (marked with asterisks in

2419-612: The purpose of which is not clear. He took part in the bombing of Germany, as aircrew on the Handley Page Halifax with No. 76 Squadron RAF , initially at RAF Breighton and then at RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor , both in East Yorkshire . After the conclusion of the war, he served out the rest of his term on the ground in Germany, for which he was chosen because of his knowledge of Russian. His duties are unclear. His friends assumed he

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2478-464: The quality of the following vowel), or the consonant is omitted. (See above for more details.) Thus, determining the actual pronunciation of written words is often difficult, and using a combination of the PIE etymology of a word, its form in later Greek and variations in spelling is necessary. Even so, for some words the pronunciation is not known exactly, especially when the meaning is unclear from context, or

2537-1281: The same sound) because the correspondence does not necessarily work both ways: 𐁀 , a 2 cannot necessarily be used in place of 𐀀 , a. For that reason, they are referred to as 'overlapping values': signs such as 𐁀 , a 2 are interpreted as special cases or 'restricted applications' of signs such as 𐀀 , a , and their use as largely a matter of an individual scribe's preference. Nouns likely decline for 7 cases : nominative , genitive , accusative , dative , vocative , instrumental and locative ; 3 genders : masculine, feminine, neuter; and 3 numbers : singular , dual , plural . The last two cases had merged with other cases by Classical Greek . In Modern Greek , only nominative , accusative , genitive and vocative remain as separate cases with their own morphological markings. Adjectives agree with nouns in case , gender , and number . Verbs probably conjugate for 3 tenses : past , present , future ; 3 aspects : perfect , perfective , imperfective ; 3 numbers : singular , dual , plural ; 4 moods : indicative , imperative , subjunctive , optative ; 3 voices : active , middle , passive ; 3 persons : first, second, third; infinitives , and verbal adjectives . The verbal augment

2596-418: The same symbols except that ⟨d⟩ stands for /d/ and ⟨t⟩ for both / t / and / tʰ / ). Both / r / and / l / are written ⟨r⟩ ; /h/ is unwritten unless followed by /a/ . The length of vowels and consonants is not notated. In most circumstances, the script is unable to notate a consonant not followed by a vowel. Either an extra vowel is inserted (often echoing

2655-404: The structure of the underlying language to begin experimenting. Shortly before World War II, American archaeologist Carl Blegen discovered a further 600 or so tablets of Linear B in the Mycenaean palace of Pylos on the Greek mainland. Photographs of these tablets by archaeologist Alison Frantz facilitated Ventris's later decipherment of the Linear B script. In 1948 Sir John Myres invited

2714-406: The subject and object. As an example, even though both of the following sentences consist of the same words, the meaning is different: Hypothetically speaking, suppose English were a language with a more complex declension system in which cases were formed by adding the suffixes: The first sentence above could be formed with any of the following word orders and would have the same meaning: As

2773-406: The table above): / ts / deriving from Pre-Greek clusters of a voiceless or voiceless aspirated velar stop + *y (*ky, *kʰy, *kʷy, kʷʰy) and corresponding to -ττ- or -σσ- in Greek varieties written in the Greek alphabet, and / dz / deriving from Pre-Greek clusters of a voiced dental or velar stop + *y ( *dy, *gy, *ɡʷy ), or in certain instances from word-initial *y , and corresponding to ζ in

2832-549: The unknown scripts for the audience to see. During the interview period following the lecture, Ventris spoke up to confirm that Linear B was as yet undeciphered, and he determined to decipher it. In 1940, the 18-year-old Ventris had an article "Introducing the Minoan Language" published in the American Journal of Archaeology . Ventris's initial theory was that Etruscan and Linear B were related and that this might provide

2891-498: The word has no descendants in the later dialects. The Mycenaean language is preserved in Linear B writing, which consists of about 200 syllabic characters and ideograms . Since Linear B was derived from Linear A , the script of an undeciphered Minoan language , the sounds of Mycenaean are not fully represented. A limited number of syllabic characters must represent a much greater number of syllables used in spoken speech: in particular,

2950-452: Was an inflectional language , but largely abandoned inflectional changes as it evolved into Modern English . Though traditionally classified as synthetic , Modern English has moved towards a mostly analytic language . Unlike English, many languages use suffixes to specify subjects and objects and word cases in general. Inflected languages have a freer word order than modern English, an analytic language in which word order identifies

3009-460: Was an English architect, classicist and philologist who deciphered Linear B , the ancient Mycenaean Greek script. A student of languages, Ventris had pursued decipherment as a personal vocation since his adolescence. After creating a new field of study, Ventris died in a car crash a few weeks before the publication of Documents in Mycenaean Greek , written with John Chadwick . Ventris

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3068-580: Was born into a traditional army family. His grandfather, Francis Ventris , was a major-general and Commander of British Forces in China . His father, Edward Francis Vereker Ventris, was a lieutenant-colonel in the Indian Army, who retired early due to ill health. Edward Ventris married Anna Dorothea (Dora) Janasz, who was from a wealthy Jewish and Polish paternal background. Michael Ventris was their only child. The family moved to Switzerland for eight years, seeking

3127-553: Was named in his honor by the IAU in 1970. Declension In linguistics , declension (verb: to decline ) is the changing of the form of a word , generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection . Declensions may apply to nouns , pronouns , adjectives , adverbs , and determiners to indicate number (e.g. singular, dual, plural), case (e.g. nominative , accusative , genitive , dative ), gender (e.g. masculine, neuter, feminine), and

3186-568: Was not boarding at school, Ventris lived with his mother, before 1935 in coastal hotels, and then in the avant garde Berthold Lubetkin 's Highpoint modernist apartments in Highgate , north London . His mother's acquaintances, who frequented the house, included many sculptors, painters, and writers of the day. The flat was furnished with the works of Marcel Breuer . The money for her artistic patronage came from Polish estates. Ventris's father died in 1938 and his mother, Dora, became administrator of

3245-593: Was on intelligence duties, interpreting his denials as part of a legal gag. No evidence of such assignments has emerged in the decades since. There is also no evidence that he was ever part of any code-breaking unit, as was Chadwick, even though the public has readily believed this explanation of his genius and success with Linear B. After the war he worked briefly in Sweden, learning enough Swedish to communicate with scholars. Then he came home to complete his architectural education with honours in 1948 and settled down with Lois working as an architect. He designed schools for

3304-451: Was sent to Bickley Hall School in Bromley, Kent. His parents divorced in 1935. At this time, he secured a scholarship to Stowe School . At Stowe he learned some Latin and Greek . He did not do outstanding work there – by then he was spending most of his spare time learning as much as he could about Linear B, some of his study time being spent under the covers at night with a torch. When he

3363-659: Was similar to Ventris's: her family was well-to-do, she had travelled in Europe, and she was interested in architecture. She was also popular and very beautiful. Ventris did not complete his architecture studies, being conscripted in 1942. He chose the Royal Air Force (RAF). His preference was for navigator rather than pilot, and he completed the extensive training in the UK and Canada, to qualify early in 1944 and be commissioned. While training, he studied Russian intensively for several weeks,

3422-600: Was some academic scepticism about the decipherment, continuing into the 1960s. Today the Mycenaean Greek attribution is universally accepted by academics. An English Heritage blue plaque commemorates Ventris at his home in North End, Hampstead and a street in Heraklion , the capital of the Greek island of Crete , was named in his honor. The Ventris crater on the far side of the Moon

3481-605: Was the most family he had ever had. It may have been at Gabo's house that he began the study of Russian . He decided on architecture as a career, and enrolled in the Architectural Association School of Architecture . There he met his wife-to-be Lois Knox-Niven, known as Betty, daughter of pilot Lois Butler and stepdaughter of Alan Samuel Butler , chairman of the De Havilland Aircraft Company . A fellow architecture student, her social background

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