Marrism

Marrism, also known as the Japhetic theory and/or the New Theory of Language, refers to the views of Soviet linguist Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr (Никола́й Я́ковлевич Марр, 1864-1934). Marr's theory was an alternative to the traditional "family tree" model of a language family descending from a proto-language, which Marr dismissed as "bourgeois" linguistics. The specific details of Marr's theory changed over the course of his lifetime. In 1950, Joseph Stalin officially denounced Marr's theory, and it was no longer a part of Soviet ideology.

Terminology and periodization
Marr referred to his own approach as яфетическая теория "Japhetic theory" or яфет(ид)ология "Japhet(id)ology". Other Russian texts of the time call it новое учение о языке "New Theory of Language". Marr and his followers generally did not use the term марризм "Marrism", nor did Stalin in his 1950 rebuttal of the theory.

Kevin Tuite divides Marr's scholarship into four periods: the "Kartvelological period" (1908–1916) during which Marr theorized that Japhetic (i.e. Kartvelian) was part of a "Noetic" family alongside Semitic and Hamitic; the "Caucasological period" (1916–1920) during which he focused on the "layers" and mixed heritages of indigenous Caucasian languages; the "Mediterraneanist period" (1920–1923) during which he focused on Japhetic as a "third ethnic element" in the Mediterranean (i.e. Etruscan, Basque, Pelasgian); and finally "The New Theory of Language" (1923-1934), the most radical period commonly referred to as "Marrism" which Marr's students continued after his death.

Components of the theory
Ivan Meshchaninov, one of Marr's former students, identified thirty-four theses underpinning Marr's ideas. Chief among these is the concept that all languages are monogenetic, i.e. come from a common ancestor, and share certain stable elements (“characteristics”) in common. These characteristics can unite and combine in different ways, under the influence of natural and historical conditions. Rather than referring to language "families" as in traditional historical linguistics, Meshchaninov refers to language "systems". The formation of new languages comes not from the divergence of a proto-language into a family, but rather from the hybridization ("crossing") of multiple languages into a single system. A system is characterized by the sum total of characteristics its languages share in common, and these new languages may bear little resemblance to their ancestors.

Among other theses that Meshchaninov's identified were four primordial syllables (sal, roš, jon, ber) as the source of all vocabulary in the world's languages, as well as the concept that language is an element of the economic superstructure belonging to social class, rather than an element of the economic base belonging to nationality. Language was believed to have the same superstructural value as that of painting and other forms of artistic expression.

Boris Serebrennikov narrowed Meshchaninov's thirty-four theses down to four basic theses: all words having been derived from the four primordial syllables; the development of new languages by hybridization; language evolution as a stadial process; and "the semantic transformation of primitive totem-names".

Background
Nikolai Marr was born in western Georgia to an elderly Scottish father and a native Georgian mother, who (if Marr’s recollection is to be believed) did not even share a common language with each other.

Marr's native language was Georgian, and he was bothered by Georgian's apparent "orphan" status among the languages Eurasia. He perceived the other Eurasian languages to be members of large "friendly families" with reconstructible ancestors and many siblings, whereas his own language apparently had no relatives aside from Megrelian, Lak, and Svan.

In the years leading up to World War I, Marr became interested in the concept of hybridity. He believed that the Georgian and Armenian languages were "mixed" with each other on multiple levels. He also became especially interested in the Svan language, and attributed many of its distinctive features to borrowing and mixing with other languages.

Marr also proposed a massive "Noetic" family containing all the languages in the world (named after the Biblical character Noah), with three sub-families: Hamitic, Semitic, and Japhetic (each named after one of Noah's sons from the Bible). Marr initially used the term Japhetic to refer to Kartvelian and other languages of the Caucasus, but he soon began to find Japhetic elements in diverse languages from all parts of the world.

Marr eventually rejected the notion of language families altogether, and emphasized his theory's ideological parallels with Marxism. He espoused that all languages were underlyingly Japhetic, and that the languages of the world were destined to merge into a single language (much like how the nations of the world were destined to unite into one global nation under Soviet provision). Naturally, this single language would resemble Russian.

At various points in his career, Marr managed the Department of Oriental Languages of St. Petersburg State University, the State Public Library, and the Caucasian Historical Archeological Institute. Marr also established the Academy for the History of Material Culture, and his own pet project, the Japhetic Institute. He established the latter in 1921, originally calling it the Institute of Japhetidological Research. Its stated goal was "to study the Japhetic languages of the original population of Europe in their relic pure nature and new formations in the types of speech and to develop language convergence theory”.