More antique Russian

[John Dunn]

In response to Will's reproach I am re-sending to the list my annotated translation of the passage in question.  I have removed a note that essentially duplicates some of Will's explanations and added a new note about the agreement of 'perevezeno'. 

Also on 19 October the above-mentioned Priadunov made a statement to the Mining Department in which he claimed that he had delivered to the laboratory of the Mining Department in Moscow Russian oil, which he had extracted in 1746 and in the first four months of 1747 [while exploring] in the Pustozersk uezd close to the river Ukhta, to a quantity [weight] of 40 poods. Priadunov claimed to have subjected all of this oil to a process of double distillation, and the result of this double distillation was pure oil which had a weight of two-thirds [of the original], i.e. 26 poods and 26½ pounds.

Notes:

1. This does not claim to be a finshed version, but I wanted to make it reasonably transparent how I got from the original to the translation.

2. Even by the undemanding standards of the 18th century this is not particularly elegant piece of writing, and I cannot rule out the possibility that the text is corrupt (or that it is written by someone who is not a native speaker of Russian).

3. I am not sure that agreement of перевезено is defective.  The syntax here in not entirely transparent, but I take the subject to be the numeral construction: российской нефти ... сорок пудов, and to the best of my knowledge neuter agreement with such constructions is not unusual in 17th- and 18th-century Russian.  But there may be other and better explanations.

John Dunn.




-----Original Message-----
From: William Ryan <wfr at SAS.AC.UK>
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 13:35:34 +0100
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] More antique Russian

To repeat a complaint made often enough before, if SEELANGers respond 
off-list to requests for information this not only leads to unnecessary 
duplication of effort, it defeats the whole purpose of the list, which 
is to exchange information and opinion. In this particular interesting 
case I would quite like to know if anyone has come up with a better 
explanation of the apparently defective agreement of 'perevezeno' in 
your problem passage.

Will


John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Address:
Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
40137 Bologna
Italy
Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------