The History of a Myth: Marr and Marrism

1
The History of a Myth Marr and Marrism

• Notes from a book by V. M. Alpatov

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Biographical background

• Born 1864 in Georgia, son of a Scottish father
  (81 years old!) and a Georgian mother
• Showed high linguistic aptitude from early on
  studied (in addition to Georgian) Russian,
  German, French, English, Latin, Greek and Turkish
  in Gymnasium
• At Petersburg U, was first student ever to study
  simultaneously all languages in all four depts
  devoted to Near Eastern studies Armenian,
  Georgian, Persian, Turkish, Tatar, Sanskrit,
  Arabic, Hebrew, Syrian.

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Fast rise to fame

• Graduated 1888, began teaching in 1891, by 1911
  had title Akademik
• Discovered valuable monuments of Georgian and
  Armenian language on expeditions to Sinai and
  Palestine
• Authored grammars and dictionaries of Georgian,
  Armenian, Abkhaz, etc.

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But did he have linguistic training?

• He never took a single course in linguistics
• Near Eastern studies at Petersburg U did not
  include courses in linguistics
• His main contributions are in archeology,
  philology, and literary studies
• In one of his later works, Marr wrote that the
  IndoEuropeanists had gone too far in their
  research and it was hard for them to turn back
  without having to demolish their idols. Marr
  didnt have such a problem.

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In a class of his own

• Already as a student, Marr criticized the work of
  qualified linguists, who were forced to move to
  other work, and ultimately there were no
  specialists in Caucasian/Near Eastern languages
  with enough linguistic training to judge his
  work, and also no linguists with enough knowledge
  of Caucasian/Near Eastern languages to judge his
  work

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Marr, Marr so contraire

• I have a habit of listening to everyone who has
  given me advice (and there have been so many) in
  order to be that much more sharp in often doing
  the exact opposite. from Marrs autobiography
• Marr completely rejected Western scholarship
• Antoine Meillet (famous linguist Marr met in
  Paris in 1894) Marr has a striking imagination
  which is totally lacking in linguistic content

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An axe to grind

• Marrs work shows a consistent focus on proving
  the importance of Georgian in particular and
  Caucasian languages as a whole. He felt that the
  scholarly world had unjustly ignored them.
• He felt it was unfair that the Georgian language
  was considered an isolate, and he was
  determined to find some relationship to other
  languages

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The third son of Noah

• Japhetic theory -- 1908 Marr tries to prove
  that Georgian is related to the Semitic
  languages, despite his lack of skill with
  comparative/historical linguistics
• Language Hybridization theory -- He was also
  convinced that some Armenian dialects were
  related to Georgian he didnt understand that
  apparent similarities were more likely the result
  of recent contact

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Where these ideas lead

• This went beyond anything acceptable as a theory
  of substrates in language and ultimately led to
  hypothesis that hybridization is relevant to
  many, and later to all languages. This of course
  meant that ALL languages were related to the
  Caucasian (Georgian) languages
• This especially applied to languages that had not
  been identified as belonging to any other
  families, which were immediately dubbed
  Japhetic, inlcuding the Basques (thus giving
  Georgian a foothold in Europe) Also Etruscan,
  Hittite, Dravidian, Chuvash, Hottentot
• Some of his ideas were clearly ridiculous, but
  others had some basis in fact the problem is
  that fact and fantasy were all mixed together

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Ultimately Marr saw two kinds of languages

• The Japhetic ones that, for the most part, had
  not been assigned to other families
• Those in other families he designated as
  hybrids, with a superficial layer (which was
  I-E, Semitic, etc.), and a deeper layer (which
  was Japhetic). The superficial layer is
  associated with the conquering elite, whereas the
  Japhetic layer is that of the original nation
  this idea played out harmoniously with the
  communist revolutionary ideology of the
  Bolsheviks

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Today we know that

• No one takes the Japhetic theory seriously
• In fact, no one even believes that the Kartvelian
  languages are related to the other Caucasian
  languages
• And of course Armenian and Hittite are I-E

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Along comes the Revolution

• Marr decided to side with the new govt
• Even before the revolution and civil war, Marr
  had drifted away from his original group of
  students, and now he was cut off from them and
  from going on expeditions to the Caucasus.
• This meant he had no new factual material, and he
  turned his attention to linguistics (his weakest
  field)
• Meshchanin becomes his new student and later
  leads the new theory of language

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Post-revolution

• Marr tries to establish international Basque
  institute, but fails and turns from Western
  science
• 1921 In SSSR he founds
• State Academy of History and Material Culture
• Japhetic Institute (the only linguistic institute
  in Academy of Sciences at the time)

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The New Teaching about Language

• The Japhetic theory grew into a theory of world
  proportions
• Premiered Nov 21, 1923 there are/is no
  protolanguage
• A definitive break with real science, and a
  tragedy both for Marr and for Soviet science

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The new Soviet dogma

• The New Teaching about Language is full of
  contradictions of facts, unproved claims, bad
  logic, divergence from accepted scientific
  practice so why was it the accepted Soviet dogma
  of linguistics for two decades?
• It was scientifically weak, but ideologically
  powerful, especially for the Stalinist cult of
  personality.
• The ideas and the person were also very
  attractive, thus forming a myth

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A work in progress

• There is no definitive characterization of the
  New Teaching about Language because Marr himself
  kept changing it, though always in one direction,
  but with contradictions

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New Teaching

• Language is a superstructure of society, like art
• Language developed independently in various
  societies, but there is just one path of cultural
  development
• Language was at first gestural, and then there
  was a revolution with invention of spoken
  language, and those that had it had advantage of
  power

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New Teaching

• Spoken language starts not with sounds and words,
  but with an ideology of structure syntax
• The original spoken language consisted of only
  four elements SAL, BER, JON, ROSh (based on the
  tribal names of Mediterranean peoples)

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New Teaching

• Next comes the stage of phonetic and semantic
  differentiation, when the four elements were
  broken down into sounds and given meanings, but
  ALL words go back to those tribal names.
• For example Arm and leg were not coined as
  parts of the body, but as connected with magical
  function, in dancing and playingThe lexicon was
  built up by hybridization and phonetic
  differentiation of the four basic elements.

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New Teaching

• Grammar also developed in stages, going from
  isolating (most primitive Chinese) gt
  agglutinative (Turkish) gt Inflectional (most
  developed and perfect)
• Only the languages with complex inflection were
  fully developed Romance and Germanic languages
  lagged behind, showed some of their Japhetic
  origins

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New Teaching

• Parts of speech developed in this order nouns gt
  pronouns gt verbs
• Plural came before singular
• There is no such thing as protolanguages because
  all languages are hybrids
• Shared vocabulary does not come from genetic
  relationships, nor does it come from borrowings
  it comes from hybridization and the single path
  of linguistic development

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New Teaching

• Russian and French are closer to Georgian than
  they are to other Slavic and Romance languages
• Japhetites were the bearers of the creative
  origins of the exploited social strata of such
  ancient times that they cannot be assigned a
  historical name
• All languages must go through a Japhetic stage
• The development of languages is conditioned by
  social causes, reflecting social structure

23
New Teaching

• Personal pronouns and singular are connected to
  more developed understanding of the individual
• Superlative adjectives were a property of most
  developed languages
• Revolutionary shifts in language were motivated
  by changes in technology and material culture,
  which yielded new ways of thinking and talking,
  and this is why there are different systems of
  languages

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New Teaching

• All languages, and all thinking, is class-based
• Languages of the same class are more the same
  than languages of the same nation or country

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Language types and society types
Language types Society types
isolating primordial communism
agglutinating clan system
inflectional class-based society
local dialects feudal society
national language capitalism
struggle in a language with national form and proletarian content transition from capitalism to communism
an international language, probably isolating classless society
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On our way to one world language

• Language is preparing for its revolution, to
  create a new and unified language where lofty
  beauty comingles with the highest development of
  reason. Where? Comrades, only in our communist
  classless society. --Marr

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Problems with the bright futures

• The correlations between language types and
  classes mixes together typological and
  sociolinguistic types
• Japhetic studies are anchored in only two points
  a past so distant we have no written records,
  and a future that we cannot reach but this also
  made them impossible to disprove
• Marr claimed to solve the unsolvable by
  postulating how language came into being

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The one global language

• Marr didnt give many details, except to say it
  wouldnt be a spoken language
• 1926 -- a group was formed at the Japhetic
  institute to establish the theoretical norms of
  the future common language of mankind, but their
  work never got off the ground

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No checks and balances

• According to Marr, all sounds could become all
  other sounds, unlike his enemies, the
  indo-europeanists, he didnt follow
  regularities of sound change, and his
  correspondences were never limited, except by
  ideological motives (causing him to claim there
  was no connection between Russian rab slave and
  rabota work)

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Language planning

• In 20s and 30s the new Soviet Union had to create
  alphabets for unwritten languages and for
  languages with Arabic script, etc. -- somehow
  Marr and marrism got the credit for making this
  happen
• His only real contribution to these practical
  problems was his analytical alphabet of
  Abkhazian, which was supposed to prefigure the
  one world language, which was devised before the
  revolution and adopted in 1924

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So much for that one

• But his alphabet was designed to capture all
  possible sounds and, with 62 symbols, was too
  complicated to be practical, so it was replaced
  in 1926

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Leadership?

• Marrs works contain an abundance of
  ultra-revolutionary phrases, but very little
  practical information, and what directives there
  are, are usually impractical. For example, he
  said that one should not use a given dialect as
  the basis for constructing a literary language,
  but instead create something equally
  comprehensible to all dialects this and other
  guidelines caused problems in language planning

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Jakovlev, Polivanov

• Fortunately there were other, more talented
  people who actually did the work
• They had to do battle with Marr and his
  analytical alphabet

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Ardent supporters

• Marr had many admirers, even including the famous
  poet Brjusov, who saluted Japhetic theory on a
  poem, as well as many officials in the Communist
  party and Soviet govt
• People in related fields (philosophy, literature,
  archeology) just took him at his word, for they
  desired a key to prehistory