Editing Linear A (section)

=== Challenges to decipherment ===

One major barrier to its decipherment is the limited surviving [[text corpus|corpus]]. Only around 1400 Linear A inscriptions survive, in contrast to the 6000 available for Linear B. As a result, researchers are stuck with limited [[sample size]]s, making it difficult to reliably detect patterns.<ref name = "SalgarellaOverview" /><ref name="TomasHandbook"/><ref name="SalgAeon">{{cite magazine |last=Salgarella |first=Ester |date=17 June 2022 |title=Cracking the Cretan code |url=https://aeon.co/essays/without-a-rosetta-stone-can-linguists-decipher-minoan-script |magazine=Aeon|access-date=7 March 2024}}</ref> Similarly, Linear A inscriptions are often fragmentary, damaged, or otherwise hard to read. It can be difficult to individuate particular signs and to distinguish separate signs from handwriting variants.<ref name = "SalgarellaOverview" /><ref name="TomasHandbook"/><ref name="SalgAeon" /> Finally, Linear A inscriptions tend to be brief and repetitive. Rather than complete sentences, many are lists where each entry consists of a toponym or personal name followed by a logogram and then a numeral. Thus, the surviving corpus contains few spelled-out words and limited evidence of the grammatical structure.<ref name = "SalgarellaOverview" /><ref name="TomasHandbook"/><ref name="Winterstein2015" />

A second barrier is the scarcity of external evidence. No [[Multilingual inscription|bilingual inscription]]s have been found, preventing the script from being deciphered in the manner that [[Egyptian hieroglyphs]] were deciphered using the [[Rosetta Stone]].<ref name = "SalgarellaOverview" /><ref name="TomasHandbook"/> The underlying language of Linear A has not been determined, and it is not clear that the same language was used for its entire period of use. The grammatical evidence that can be gleaned from the surviving corpus suggests that it was not a close relative of any known language.<ref name = "SalgarellaOverview"/><ref name="TomasHandbook"/>