Japhetite theory
The Japhetite theory (later New Doctrine of Language ) is an obsolete theory of linguistics, which is based on a common basis of the Caucasian and Indo-European languages as well as Basque .
It was developed by the Russian linguist Nikolai Jakowlewitsch Marr (1865-1934) and until 1950 was the officially accepted basis of Soviet linguistics .
Theory-historical background
The Japhetite theory emerged against the background of the extremely Eurocentric Indo - European studies at the end of the 19th century and the colonial ideology of imperialism , which sought an ideology of justification for the hegemony of Europeans in the world and developed the view that the Indo-European peoples historically in connection with Christianity necessarily produced the highest culture in the world, which legitimizes it to direct the destinies of other peoples.
At this time it was customary to use labels from the Flood myth and the history of the tribes of Noah, as they are biblically handed down in the genesis table ( Semites , Hamites and others) for assumed population-genetic connections .
This Japhetite theory pursues the biblical thesis that the descendants of Japhet migrated over the Caucasus in western (Europe) and eastern direction (Far East) and spread there. Even Indians and Iranians belonged to this language group would have mixed with people from the East, but their Satemsprachen ( Ostindogermanische languages keep from satem = 100).
Marr therefore included the Caucasian, Turkic and Indo-European languages of the Japhetite language, a common metalanguage family.
Early Soviet Japhetite Theory
In Soviet times the biblical background receded in favor of an anti-imperialist ideological structure. In this situation, Marr was the only non-Indo-Europeanist to assume the role of opinion leader.
During the Soviet era, the Japhetite theory was given the name New Doctrine of Language and, in addition to the original core theory, contained the following additional ideology modules:
- Superstructure thesis: Language is to be seen as a superstructure phenomenon on the basis of production and production relations.
- Doctrine of the class character of language: Like every superstructure phenomenon, language is class-dependent.
- Stadial typology: The language states replace each other with the change of social formations. The theory of language families must be replaced by a theory of language stages. Every social structure produces a corresponding language stage. Communism, too, would produce a completely new state of language corresponding to it.
- Theory of the uniform glottogonic process: The development paths of all languages are the same.
- Language crossing theory : The crossing of languages is mainly responsible for the divergence of closely related dialects. Languages cannot split off from one another as in the family tree model, but can only cross with one another and thereby produce new languages. A language can transform itself beyond recognition in a social explosion. For example, the Swanish spoken in the Caucasus is a language that has been transformed back into the Japhetite language state.
- Language palaeontology / four-element analysis: The language has its origin in the original sounds that were uttered during human work. In all words of all languages, the four primitive elements ber, jon, rosch, sal (English: ber, yon, rosh, sal) can be found.
The respective language states correspond to the social class states. For example, Latin as the language of the patricians and not the plebeians is not a Japhetite language, while the Japhetite stage has been preserved in the language of the enslaved Basque minority.
Marr's theses were never underpinned by evidence or critical reconstruction of the claims, but rather captivated the non-experts even within linguistics with immense data from a variety of exotic languages, as well as incomprehensibility and barely comprehensible jumping between different theoretical assumptions.
Syntactic stage typology of Meshchaninov
From the 1930s onwards, Ivan Ivanovich Meschtschaninow developed Marr's Japhetitology on the basis of syntactic investigations into a theoretically more demanding but still unsatisfactory model.
Within the uniform glottogonic process, the languages go through the following language states:
- passive: In this stage, which is characterized by an incorporating language structure (for example in Indian languages), the collective perception leads to a generalization of beings and objects into groups that can be designated as linguistic classes. In this state, logical subject and object merge and the world is imagined as being passively guided by a mythological subject.
- ergative: In this transition stage to the active language structure, the acting subject of the transitive sentence is first removed from the incorporative complex and marked separately. Representatives of this type are the Caucasian languages, Basque and a few others.
- active: In this last stage of the language, the separation into nominative and accusative marking appears to be finally completed for the intransitive statements.
End of the Japhetite theory
In a well-received article in the Pravda newspaper on June 20, 1950 , Stalin declared Marr's Japhetitology to be un-Marxist. As a result, methods of the young grammar school were increasingly used again in Soviet linguistics .
See also
literature
- Fedor M. Berésin: History of Linguistic Theories . Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1980.
- ↑ Introduction to synchronist universal history , Gatterer, 1771, and: (1) A note on the history of 'Semitic' , 2003, by Martin Baasten; and (2) Taal-, land- en volkenkunde in de Achttiende eeuw , 1994, by Han Vermeulen (in Dutch).
- ^ Nikolai Jakowlewitsch Marr