Combinatorial method (linguistics)

Last updated March 21, 2019

The combinatorial method is a method of linguistic analysis that is used to study texts which are written in an unknown language, and to study the language itself, where the unknown language has no obvious or proven well-understood close relatives, and where there are few bilingual texts which might otherwise have been used to help understand the language. It consists of three distinct analyses:

Structural linguistics is an approach to linguistics originating from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and is part of the overall approach of structuralism. Structural linguistics involves collecting a corpus of utterances and then attempting to classify all of the elements of the corpus at their different linguistic levels: the phonemes, morphemes, lexical categories, noun phrases, verb phrases, and sentence types.

Content analysis is a research method for studying documents and communication artifacts, which might be texts of various formats, pictures, audio or video. Social scientists use content analysis to examine patterns in communication in a replicable and systematic manner. One of the key advantages of using content analysis to analyse social phenomena is its non-invasive nature, in contrast to simulating social experiences or collecting survey answers.

The method relies principally on information that is available in and about the language being studied, and has most famously been used for study of the Etruscan language. It has also been used for other languages, for example by Yves Duhoux (1982) for Eteocretan. The method was first advocated by Wilhelm Deeke in his 1875 refutation of Wilhelm Corssen's attempt to demonstrate a supposed relationship between Etruscan and the Indo-European languages by the etymological method, which is based on perceived resemblances between words in the text in the unknown language and words existing in known languages.

The Etruscan language was the spoken and written language of the Etruscan civilization, in Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Corsica, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Lombardy and Campania. Etruscan influenced Latin, but was eventually completely superseded by it. The Etruscans left around 13,000 inscriptions which have been found so far, only a small minority of which are of significant length; some bilingual inscriptions with texts also in Latin, Greek, or Phoenician; and a few dozen loanwords, such as the name Roma, but Etruscan's influence was significant. Attested from 700 BC to AD 50, the relation of Etruscan to other languages has been a source of long-running speculation and study, with its being referred to at times as an isolate, one of the Tyrsenian languages, and a number of other less well-known possibilities.

The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects.

The combinatorial method was developed to replace the etymological method because the latter bases itself on circular reasoning, in which the assumed relationship purportedly proves the interpretation of the text and vice versa, thus being inadequate for scientific study or proof. While mainstream specialists in Etruscology have long since abandoned the etymological method in favour of the slow, rigorous work of the combinatorial method, the etymological method is still popular with amateurs wishing to prove a relationship between ancient texts and an existing language.

Circular reasoning is a logical fallacy in which the reasoner begins with what they are trying to end with. The components of a circular argument are often logically valid because if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. Circular reasoning is not a formal logical fallacy but a pragmatic defect in an argument whereby the premises are just as much in need of proof or evidence as the conclusion, and as a consequence the argument fails to persuade. Other ways to express this are that there is no reason to accept the premises unless one already believes the conclusion, or that the premises provide no independent ground or evidence for the conclusion. Begging the question is closely related to circular reasoning, and in modern usage the two generally refer to the same thing.

Etruscology is the study of the ancient civilization of the Etruscans in Italy, which was incorporated into an expanding Roman Empire during the period of Rome's Middle Republic. Since the Etruscans were politically and culturally influential in pre-Republican Rome, many Etruscologists are also scholars of the history, archaeology, and culture of Rome.

Folk linguistics is the amateur study of linguistics. The term is often used as a pejorative.

Archaeological-antiquarian analysis

Archaeological-antiquarian analysis consists of using archaeological and antiquarian methods to determine the nature of the text, such as the nature of the object bearing the inscription, and the circumstances and location of its discovery. An example of ignoring this stage would be to describe the Pyrgi Tablets as part of a temple archive, as some commentators did when the tablets were found in 1964, when quite clearly the tablets had been nailed to a wall as a notice. Part of this stage is also rigorously checking the epigraphic or palaeographic details of the inscription concerned. Vladimir Georgiev's claim that Etruscan is related to Hittite was largely based on a non-existent word esmi which had been incorrectly read from an inscription, while Mario Alinei's 2003 claim that the word iθal means "drink" and that Etruscan is thus based on Hungarian is ruled out by the fact that iθal occurs in one single inscription and does not re-occur in the many hundreds of known inscribed Etruscan symposium vessels which might be expected to contain the word "drink" if their Latin equivalents are anything to go by.

The Pyrgi Tablets, found in a 1964 excavation of a sanctuary of ancient Pyrgi on the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy, are three golden leaves that record a dedication made around 500 BC by Thefarie Velianas, king of Caere, to the Phoenician goddess ʻAshtaret. Pyrgi was the port of the southern Etruscan town of Caere. Two of the tablets are inscribed in the Etruscan language, the third in Phoenician.

Epigraphy is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the writing and the writers. Specifically excluded from epigraphy are the historical significance of an epigraph as a document and the artistic value of a literary composition.

Palaeography (UK) or paleography is the study of ancient and historical handwriting. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of scriptoria.

Formal-structural analysis

Formal-structural analysis consists of breaking down words into their component morphemes to form a hypothesis of the structure of the language, which must be consistent with that deduced from other interpreted or partly interpreted inscriptions, and with the features that might be expected in known languages. The point of this stage is to reveal the root words and their roles in the text. While establishing the meaning of the word or morpheme is not the key goal at this stage, it can however rule out potential meanings. For example, Zacharie Mayani's claim that Etruscan θu means "two" is ruled out by the fact that θu is the only Etruscan numeral which is never found with a plural referent, and in addition it does not have a derived multiple of 10 based on it, which points to it meaning not "two" but "one".

A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit in a language. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding. The linguistics field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. When a morpheme stands by itself, it is considered as a root because it has a meaning of its own and when it depends on another morpheme to express an idea, it is an affix because it has a grammatical function. Every word comprises one or more morphemes.

Content and context analysis

Once both the root form of a word and an idea of its role in the text and elsewhere are established, an analysis of content and context can be carried out to determine the word's part of speech, or whether it is part of a name, and if so, the sex of the person, and if an object or an action, its likely nature or general semantic area. This stage must also ensure that any proposed more definite meaning is consistent with all other instances, but must also allow for the possibility of homonyms with different meanings and morphemes with more than one purpose.

Meanings and interpretations established by the combinatorial method are not certain, for example, as meanings confirmed by a bilingual text or by a reliable ancient gloss, but are of variable reliability, and as provisional models. The understanding of the Etruscan language has gradually increased over the years, as new knowledge from the Etruscan texts themselves, and from research in other disciplines of Etruscology. Giulio Facchetti's research into Etruscan private law (2000)^[1] taken together with the publication of the text of the Cortona tablet in 1999 is an example of where this has happened.

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Linear A is a writing system used by the Minoans (Cretans) from 2500 to 1450 BC. Along with Cretan hieroglyphic, it is one of two undeciphered writing systems used by ancient Minoan and peripheral peoples. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civilization. It was discovered by archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. It is related to the Linear B script, which succeeded the Linear A and was used by the Mycenaean civilization.

The Etruscan civilization is the modern name given to a powerful and wealthy civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany, south of the Arno river, western Umbria, northern and central Lazio, with offshoots also to the north in the Po Valley, in the current Emilia-Romagna, south-eastern Lombardy and southern Veneto, and to the south, in some areas of Campania. As distinguished by its unique language, this civilization endured from before the time of the earliest Etruscan inscriptions until its assimilation into the Roman Republic, beginning in the late 4th century BC with the Roman–Etruscan Wars.

A root is a word that does not have a prefix in front of the word or a suffix at the end of the word. The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Content words in nearly all languages contain, and may consist only of root morphemes. However, sometimes the term "root" is also used to describe the word minus its inflectional endings, but with its lexical endings in place. For example, chatters has the inflectional root or lemma chatter, but the lexical root chat. Inflectional roots are often called stems, and a root in the stricter sense may be thought of as a monomorphemic stem.

In localised Celtic polytheism practised in Great Britain, Sulis was a deity worshipped at the thermal spring of Bath. She was worshipped by the Romano-British as Sulis Minerva, whose votive objects and inscribed lead tablets suggest that she was conceived of both as a nourishing, life-giving mother goddess, and as an effective agent of curses wished by her votaries.

Etymology is the study of the history of words. By extension, the term "the etymology " means the origin of the particular word and for place names, there is a specific term, toponymy.

Eteocretan is the non-Greek language of a few alphabetic inscriptions of ancient Crete.

In linguistics and pedagogy, an interlinear gloss is a gloss placed between lines, such as between a line of original text and its translation into another language. When glossed, each line of the original text acquires one or more lines of transcription known as an interlinear text or interlinear glossed text (IGT)—interlinear for short. Such glosses help the reader follow the relationship between the source text and its translation, and the structure of the original language. In its simplest form, an interlinear gloss is simply a literal, word-for-word translation of the source text.

Bilingual dictionary specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another

A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be unidirectional, meaning that they list the meanings of words of one language in another, or can be bidirectional, allowing translation to and from both languages. Bidirectional bilingual dictionaries usually consist of two sections, each listing words and phrases of one language alphabetically along with their translation. In addition to the translation, a bilingual dictionary usually indicates the part of speech, gender, verb type, declension model and other grammatical clues to help a non-native speaker use the word. Other features sometimes present in bilingual dictionaries are lists of phrases, usage and style guides, verb tables, maps and grammar references. In contrast to the bilingual dictionary, a monolingual dictionary defines words and phrases instead of translating them.

<i>Tabula Cortonensis</i> Third most extensive etruscan text

The Tabula Cortonensis is a 2200-year-old, inscribed bronze tablet of Etruscan origin, discovered in Cortona, Italy. It may record for posterity the details of an ancient legal transaction which took place in the ancient Tuscan city of Cortona, known to the Etruscans as Curtun. Its 40-line, two-sided inscription is the third longest inscription found in the Etruscan language, and the longest discovered in the 20th century. While the discovery was made in October 1992, the contents were not published until seven years later, in 1999. The delay was due to the tablet's having been brought to the police by someone who claimed to have found it at a construction site. When provided to the police, the tablet had been broken into seven fragments, with the original right bottom corner missing. Investigators believed that, if the existence of the tablet were not initially disclosed, it would have been easier to ascertain whether the tablet had really been found at that location and possibly locate the missing portion.

Tyrsenian, named after the Tyrrhenians, is a hypothetical extinct family of closely related ancient languages proposed by Helmut Rix (1998), which consists of the Etruscan language of northern and central Italy; the Rhaetic language of the Alps, named after the Rhaetian people; and the Lemnian language of the Aegean Sea. Camunic in northern Lombardy, in between Etruscan and Rhaetic, may belong here too, but the material is very scant.

In linguistics, a blend word or a blend is a word formed from parts of two or more other words. These parts are sometimes, but not always, morphemes.

Cypro-Minoan syllabary undeciphered syllabary used on the island of Cyprus during the late Bronze Age (ca. 1550–1050 BCE)

The Cypro-Minoan syllabary (CM) is an undeciphered syllabary used on the island of Cyprus during the late Bronze Age. The term "Cypro-Minoan" was coined by Arthur Evans in 1909 based on its visual similarity to Linear A on Minoan Crete, from which CM is thought to be derived. Approximately 250 objects—such as clay balls, cylinders, and tablets and votive stands—which bear Cypro-Minoan inscriptions, have been found. Discoveries have been made at various sites around Cyprus, as well as in the ancient city of Ugarit on the Syrian coast.

In epigraphy, a bilingual is an inscription that includes the same text in two languages. Bilinguals are important for the decipherment of ancient writing systems, and for the study of ancient languages with small or repetitive corpora.

Transfer-based machine translation is a type of machine translation (MT). It is currently one of the most widely used methods of machine translation. In contrast to the simpler direct model of MT, transfer MT breaks translation into three steps: analysis of the source language text to determine its grammatical structure, transfer of the resulting structure to a structure suitable for generating text in the target language, and finally generation of this text. Transfer-based MT systems are thus capable of using knowledge of the source and target languages.

Odia morphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of morphemes and other units of meaning in the Odia language. Morphemes are the smallest units of the Odia language that carry and convey a unique meaning and is grammatically appropriate. A morpheme in Odia is the most minuscule meaningful constituent which combines and synthesizes the phonemes into a meaningful expression through its (morpheme's) form & structure. Thus, in essence, the morpheme is a structural combination of phonemes in Odia. In other words, in Odia language, the morpheme is a combination of sounds that possess and convey a meaning. A morpheme is not necessarily a meaningful word in Odia. In Odia, every morpheme is either a base or an affix.

Kassite was a language spoken by the Kassites in the Zagros Mountains of Iran and southern Mesopotamia from approximately the 18th to the 4th century BC. From the 16th to 12th centuries BC, kings of Kassite origin ruled in Babylon until they were overthrown by the Elamites.

Written Hokkien Written form of the Hokkien language

Hokkien, a Min Nan variety of Chinese spoken in Southeastern China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, does not have a unitary standardized writing system, in comparison with the well-developed written forms of Cantonese and Vernacular Chinese (Mandarin). Since there is no official standardizing body for Hokkien except the Republic of China Ministry of Education in Taiwan, there are a wide variety of different methods of writing in Vernacular Hokkien. Nevertheless, vernacular works written in the Hokkien are still commonly seen in literature, film, performing arts and music.

References

↑ Facchetti, Giulio M. (2000). "Frammenti di diritto privato etrusco" [Fragments of Etruscan Private Law] (in Italian). Florence: Olschki. ISBN 88-222-4922-4.

Pfiffig, Ambros Josef (1972). Einführung in die Etruskologie: Probleme, Methoden, Ergebnisse[Introduction to Etruscology: Problems, Methods and Results] (in German). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. ISBN 978-3-534-06068-9.

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[Facchetti2000-1] Facchetti, Giulio M. (2000). "Frammenti di diritto privato etrusco" [Fragments of Etruscan Private Law] (in Italian). Florence: Olschki. ISBN 88-222-4922-4.