One of the historical issues with linguistics is that it analyzed every language as if it were Classical Latin or Classical Greek, and if that language had elements that didn't work out... well, that can't be proper then, can it? You still see some residuum of this in English prescriptivist poppycock, like the prohibition against ending sentences in prepositions.
As linguists actually started inventorying world languages, it became more and more clear that there is a very wide dichotomy of grammatical features that don't necessarily translate well to familiar languages. There are vanishingly few features that are actually universal to all languages--the noun may well be the only universal part of speech. That a language doesn't choose to mark a feature in a particular way doesn't make it more primitive than another language. English doesn't have a numerical classifier... is it more primitive than an Australian Aboriginal language? Or is it more primitive than Japanese for not having a way to mark register (~ politeness)?
(FWIW, Linear B is used to write Mycenaean Greek, and this has been known for ~70 years.)
One of the historical issues with linguistics is that it analyzed every language as if it were Classical Latin or Classical Greek, and if that language had elements that didn't work out... well, that can't be proper then, can it? You still see some residuum of this in English prescriptivist poppycock, like the prohibition against ending sentences in prepositions.
As linguists actually started inventorying world languages, it became more and more clear that there is a very wide dichotomy of grammatical features that don't necessarily translate well to familiar languages. There are vanishingly few features that are actually universal to all languages--the noun may well be the only universal part of speech. That a language doesn't choose to mark a feature in a particular way doesn't make it more primitive than another language. English doesn't have a numerical classifier... is it more primitive than an Australian Aboriginal language? Or is it more primitive than Japanese for not having a way to mark register (~ politeness)?
(FWIW, Linear B is used to write Mycenaean Greek, and this has been known for ~70 years.)