Eyeballing Minoanists and the value of A-SA-SA-RA-ME

Minoanist Leonard Palmer once wrote, “[...] for in questions of genetic relationship the linguist rightly attaches small importance to common elements of vocabulary. Decisive are resemblances of morphological procedures, for these are less readily borrowed.”^[1]

Eyeballing is for the bored and desperate

Rational people deal in facts and probabilities, not in mere possibilities and assumptions. If one's translations depend fundamentally on subjective similarities of words between languages, then one's contribution to the field of paleolinguistics is as useful as toxic sludge.

The eyeballing method, if it can be dignified as a 'method' at all, relies primarily on individual perceptions about phonetic similarity and difference. Since subjectivity is in the eye of the beholder, different individuals will reach different conclusions about the same data according to this strategy, making it disordered and unhelpful. It's best to become familiar with this shameless tactic so as to shun it whenever it surfaces in someone's work.

Internal analysis first

A widely applicable statistic known as Zipf's Law adds to what we should already be able to deduce by experienced linguistic intuition. In any given language, the most frequent words tend to be the shortest. Conversely, less frequent words tend to be longer. Afterall, how often do words like osteochondrodysplasia or spatiotemporal pop up in everyday conversation? This relates to the efficiency of information exchange.

The sheer length of Minoan A-SA-SA-RA-ME and its derivatives also hints that it most likely belongs to a core word class, such as a noun or verb. We can see that a five-syllable term is above the average length of attested Minoan vocabulary which implies that, with all things being equal, its typical frequency in random text or conversation should have been comparatively infrequent. Yet to the contrary, its unexpected ubiquity among libation table inscriptions demonstrates in itself a strong link between its genuine semantic value and its evident religious context. If one agrees that the analyzable suffix -NA belongs specifically to nominal morphology, then since our term is found with this very suffix (KN Za 10: YA-SA-SA-RA-MA-NA), it must likewise be nominal. Hence we can make an informed guess that it's likeliest a name or common noun relevant to Minoan religion.

These rational considerations alone then compel us towards the optimal conclusion that the term conveys the name or title of a deity to which these libations must have been dedicated. Palmer's original comparison to a title for a neighbouring Anatolian goddess (or goddesses) merely supplements the strong deductive foundation of this avenue of investigation. So this identification with the divine can't be so easily downplayed as the kind of immature eyeballing method that sensible linguists work hard to avoid. This view has something richer going for it.

Bronze Age Areal influence in Anatolia and Etruscan

Here's an interesting quote from Calvert Watkins on page 52 of Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Problems in Comparative Linguistics (2001) edited by Aikhenvald and Dixon (see link):

"Consider the system of stop consonants. Proto-Indo-European had the traditional three series t d dh; already in Common Anatolian the latter two merged, yielding t and d. The correlation of voice was replaced by one of intensity (tense : lax), with the tense member realized with relative length, thus a tendency to an opposition geminate : simple. Word-finally there was probably since Indo-European times neutralization in favour of the voiced member. But more strikingly it appears that word-initially in Anatolian and there alone among all the Indo-European languages there was neutralization in favour of the unvoiced (tense) member. This explains why when the cuneiform syllabary was borrowed from Semitic, the Semitic voicing oppositions (e.g. TI vs. DI; the capitals denote values of syllabic signs) were ignored in favour of geminate versus simple: word-initial TI or DI to write the same word, but contrasting AT-TI or AD-DI vs. A-TI or A-DI. This system, and the same writing convention, is found in all the cuneiform languages, Indo-European and non-Indo-European alike."

The book goes on to mention that Hittite, Luwian, Palaic and Hurrian all show the same overall typological constraints. That is, they all seem to be pushed towards neutralization in word-initial and word-final positions with a contrast of lax and tense stops being maintained medially. So in initial position all stops tend to become lax (/t/) while in final position they all tend to become tense (such as /t:/ or /tʰ/, let's say).

Too bad Watkins didn't push this areal convergeance to its furthest logical limit because it unfortunately overlooks the Aegean languages in my view. Other languages in the area at that time which are often ignored in inquiry also, I think, demonstrate a similar pattern. Putting aside Minoan, one of the most important languages of that area during the Bronze Age, surely the Etrusco-Cypriot languages must have been present during that period, centering around the ancient territories of Arzawa and Alashiya (a.k.a. the island of Cyprus). Of the Etrusco-Cypriot grouping I propose, we may easily demonstrate Anatolia's possible influences on Etruscan, if nothing else.

Etruscan shows the same distribution of lax versus tense stops in words. The habits of Etruscan scribes when it came to spelling their language show us that unaspirated stops are the unmarked series while aspirated stops are less frequent and marked. We can see that unaspirated stops are probably "lenis" (i.e. requiring comparatively less articulatory effort) while aspirated stops are "fortis". This assertion fits well with crosslinguistic patterns and it helps to connect Etruscan's phonology with the areal convergeance described for the general area of Anatolia during the early second millenium BCE. Word-initial φ- in Etruscan is quite rare, used for foreign names and words it seems, and the other aspirated consonants are much less frequent in this position when compared to their unaspirated counterparts, as can be seen in the results thus far of my dictionary project. In word-final position, it has been noted that there is a tendency of neutralization of stop contrasts, favouring aspiration (a.k.a. "fortis"). Word-final neutralization towards fortis consonants is precisely what we expect from the patterns we see in world languages. Lenition in such circumstances on the other hand is quite rare (e.g. Lezghian's unusual word-final neutralization of stops to voiced ones). Examples in Etruscan showing word-final neutralization are flanaχ (LL 10.iii) vs. flanac (LL 11.xxix), śeχ (TLE 583) vs. śec (CIE 2611) and zilχ (TLE 126) vs. zilc (TLE 137). These spelling alternations suggest that aspiration is not a contrastive feature word-finally so that Etruscan -c and -χ are both pronounced as /-kʰ/, for example.

This adds to the heap of evidence already showing that the Etruscan language, mythos and culture originated in Anatolia just as Herodotus had wrote millenia ago.