Ivan Ivanovich Meshchaninov

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Ivan Ivanovich Meshchaninov ( Russian Иван Иванович Мещанинов , scientific transliteration Ivan Ivanovic Meščaninov , born November 24 . Jul / 6. December  1883 greg. In Ufa ; † 16th January 1967 in Leningrad ) was a Soviet linguist and archaeologist .

After graduating from St. Petersburg University as a lawyer, he began to deal with archeology, first as an amateur and later as a professional, primarily the cultures of the Caucasus and the Black Sea region, where he took part in excavations. Because of his historical interest, he became a student of Nikolai Jakowlewitsch Marr , whom he would eventually follow as a linguistic theorist as the intellectual head of Soviet linguistics.

In 1932 Meshchaninov was admitted to the Russian Academy of Sciences . In 1934 he became secretary of the Academy's Literature and Language Department. From 1933 to 1937 he was director of the Institute for Anthropology, Archeology and Ethnography. From 1935 he headed the Marr Institute for Language and Thought (now the Institute for Linguistic Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Институт лингвистических исследований РАН)).

In 1945 Meshchaninov received the Golden Star as a hero of socialist labor , and in 1943 and 1946 a Stalin Prize . He also received the Order of the Red Flag of Labor and an Order of Lenin .

Meshchaninov had neither a linguistic nor a historical education. His early works (e.g. Introduction to Japhetitology ) are uncritical interpretations of Marr's theories . After Marr's death, however, he stopped propagating the obviously fantastic statements of the New Doctrine of Language and endeavored to underpin his views of the stadiality of language development with language typological material, which made him a pioneer of the Russian language typology .

Meschtschaninow developed a theory of the relationship between parts of speech and parts of sentences, wrote works on incorporation , as well as on the idea of ​​the so-called conceptual categories on which linguistic categories are based (which Otto Jespersen had already undertaken in a similar way before him ). In addition, he dealt extensively with the Urartian language .

In the wake of Stalin's rejection of Marrism in 1950, Meshchaninov lost his posts as director of the Marr Institute and as secretary of the Academy's language and literature department. However, he was able to continue working as neither his degrees nor awards were revoked. It has probably proven helpful that in his critical newspaper article against Marrism, Stalin had expressly spoken out in favor of Meshchaninov's honesty.

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personal data
SURNAME Meschtschaninow, Iwan Iwanowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Мещани́нов, Ива́н Ива́нович (Russian); Meščaninov, Ivan Ivanovic
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet linguist and archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Ufa
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1967
Place of death Leningrad