01-10-2016, 09:49 AM
Well, according to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Abbé Barthélemy was able to decipher it by comparing direct examples of Palmyrene with Greek, which quickly led him to the key. So he did have a "Rosetta stone".
I would venture to suggest that a completely unknown language which has no direct correlation for us - no proper names, no obvious link to a known reference - would be impossible to translate.
We might be able to draw up its syntax and grammar, and even correlate that framework to our own (ngram x is a proposition, ngram y when a suffix is a verbal modifier, etc) but actually saying that word a equates to "Paris" and word b equates to "David" would be completely subjective and impossible to verify.
I would venture to suggest that a completely unknown language which has no direct correlation for us - no proper names, no obvious link to a known reference - would be impossible to translate.
We might be able to draw up its syntax and grammar, and even correlate that framework to our own (ngram x is a proposition, ngram y when a suffix is a verbal modifier, etc) but actually saying that word a equates to "Paris" and word b equates to "David" would be completely subjective and impossible to verify.