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The History of a Myth: Marr and Marrism

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Title: 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

2
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.

3
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.

4
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.

5
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

6
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

7
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

8
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

9
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

10
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

11
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

12
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

13
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)

14
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

15
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

16
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

17
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

18
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)

19
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.

20
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

21
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

22
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

24
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

25
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
26
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

27
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

28
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

29
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)

30
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

31
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

32
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

33
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

34
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
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