AUTHORS: Peter Z. Revesz

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ABSTRACT: This paper develops a feature-based similarity measure to visually compare script symbols from different alphabets and syllabaries and then uses that similarity measure within a novel algorithm to develop a new phonetic grid for Linear A. The phonetic grid is then used to develop an English-Minoan-Uralic dictionary of basic words and grammatical suffixes and prefixes. The dictionary is then used in translating twenty-eight Linear A and one Eteocretan inscription. The proposed algorithm could likely be modified to decipher other unknown languages and could become a widely used tool in computational linguistics.

KEYWORDS: computational linguistics, Cretan script family, decipherment, Linear A, similarity measure

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