The following excerpt discusses the decipherment of the Bronze Age Aegean script Linear B:
"For decades, classicists operated under the assumption that the Bronze Age Linear B tablets found at Knossos recorded an unknown, non-Greek language. In challenging this orthodox view, linguist Alice Kober first isolated recurring inflectional triplets—systematic variations in word endings that suggested a highly inflected grammatical system. Building directly on Kober's morphological grids, Michael Ventris constructed a syllabic phonetic grid based on vowel-consonant combinations. To test the hypothesis that the underlying language was an archaic dialect of Greek, Ventris substituted proposed Greek phonetic values into place-names specific to Crete, such as Amnisos. When these substitutions consistently yielded recognizable geographic and administrative terms, the non-Greek hypothesis collapsed, fundamentally redefining Aegean prehistory."
Match each textual detail from the passage to its primary rhetorical function.
- The classicists' assumption that Linear B recorded an unknown, non-Greek languageIdentifies the longstanding baseline consensus that the subsequent linguistic discoveries ultimately overturned
- The identification of recurring inflectional triplets in word endingsHighlights the foundational morphological pattern that demonstrated the grammatical structure of the script
- The substitution of proposed phonetic values into specific Cretan place-namesDescribes the specific methodological trial undertaken to test the validity of the Greek hypothesis
- The consistent yield of recognizable geographic and administrative termsCites the decisive empirical outcome that verified the proposed decipherment and disproved the earlier consensus