Do the Vinča signs record language, a conventional notation, or neither?
Six answers, none aheadNone is ahead yet. See what would settle it.
Where it stands
Six answers have been proposed. None is ahead on the evidence yet. Six are still possible. Of the two narrower questions under it, none is answered yet.
Why it matters
Writing records language so that an utterance can be recovered from the marks; a notation conveys fixed meanings without doing so; potters' marks and ornament convey nothing to a stranger[1][2]. More than four fifths of Vinča inscriptions are a single sign and the mean length in the open corpus is 1.4, so the material has almost no sequential structure to test, and the one systematic study classed most signs as pottery marks[3][4]. Proponents of a Danube script argue from the size and regularity of the repertoire, not from any reading[5][6].
Answers 6
History
- Shan M. M. Winn: comb and brush motifs make up about a sixth of all signs and are plausibly tallies, and Mäder leaves 29.5 per cent of…For: The signs are proto-writing, a notation without language
- John Chapman: most signs sit alone on vessel bases or bodies in domestic contexts, where potters' and owners' marks are found in…For: The signs are marks and ornament, not a system
- Hans J. Nissen et al.: proto-cuneiform, the one well-studied proto-writing, is an administrative system of numerals, commodity signs and…Against: The signs are proto-writing, a notation without language
- Harald Haarmann: owens, reviewing the Balkan Neolithic material as an Aegean epigrapher, found no demonstrable connection to the Aegean…Against: The signs are ancestral to the Aegean scripts
- Harald Haarmann: haarmann reports that about half of Linear A's roughly 120 signs have close shape parallels in the Old European…For: The signs are ancestral to the Aegean scripts
- Gareth A. Owens: owens, reviewing the Balkan Neolithic material as an Aegean epigrapher, found no demonstrable connection to the Aegean…Against: The signs are ancestral to the Aegean scripts
- Nenad Tasić et al.: owens, reviewing the Balkan Neolithic material as an Aegean epigrapher, found no demonstrable connection to the Aegean…Against: The signs are ancestral to the Aegean scripts
- Michael Mäder: mäder's 2019 analysis of the sign sequences classed 59 per cent as pottery marks and 11.5 per cent as whorl ornament…Against: The signs are a writing system (the Danube script)
- Michael Mäder: comb and brush motifs make up about a sixth of all signs and are plausibly tallies, and Mäder leaves 29.5 per cent of…For: The signs are proto-writing, a notation without language
- Michael Mäder: most signs sit alone on vessel bases or bodies in domestic contexts, where potters' and owners' marks are found in…For: The signs are marks and ornament, not a system
- Michael Mäder: mäder's three-way classification (59 per cent pottery marks, 11.5 per cent whorl ornament, 29.5 per cent possible…For: Mostly marks, with a small notation subset
- Wikipedia contributors: comb and brush motifs make up about a sixth of all signs and are plausibly tallies, and Mäder leaves 29.5 per cent of…For: The signs are proto-writing, a notation without language
- Asked on this site