This piece, entitled simply “The Japhetites” and dating from 1922, comes at the end of a two-decade period in which Marr worked and reworked the Japhetic theory, expanding the scope of languages encompassed therein. Marr surveys the development of this theory which postulates the existence of a Japhetic substrate of genetically related languages stretching across the Mediterranean basin. Marr was already beginning to modify the parameters of his theory, suggesting that Japhetic languages are not genetically distinct but constitute an early typological state in the history of language. At this point the Japhetic theory is coming to resemble less a hypothesis about the classification of certain languages than a speculative account of the global evolution of language. In this article Marr makes some of his most distinctive claims, such as his conception of language as a superstructural phenomenon and his denial of the possibility of reconstructing proto-languages through comparative study. He presents the Japhetic languages as offering a perspective on the primitive semantic state common to all languages. Nonetheless the piece still equivocates, referring to the Japhetites as a distinct people, albeit one that is difficult to pin down historically or geographically.

这篇文章的标题是“The Japhetites”，可追溯到 1922 年，是在 Marr 工作并重新设计 Japhetic 理论、扩大其中所包含的语言范围的两个十年的末期。马尔调查了这一理论的发展，该理论假设存在跨越地中海盆地的遗传相关语言的雅弗语基础。马尔已经开始修改他的理论参数，表明雅弗语在基因上不是不同的，而是构成语言历史上的一个早期类型学状态。在这一点上，雅弗特理论越来越不像是关于某些语言分类的假设，而是对语言全球进化的推测性解释。在这篇文章中，马尔提出了一些他最独特的主张，例如，他将语言视为一种上层建筑现象，并否认通过比较研究重建原始语言的可能性。他将 Japhetic 语言描述为对所有语言共有的原始语义状态提供了一个视角。尽管如此，这篇文章仍然模棱两可，将雅弗特人称为一个独特的民族，尽管在历史或地理上很难确定这一民族。