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Selected Papers on Russian and Slavonic Philology. Ed. by B. Auty & A.E. Pennington
English, French, German, Russian
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1969
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December 8, 2008
These SELECTED PAPERS ON RUSSIAN AND SLAVONIC PHILOLOGY by B.O. Unbegaun were compiled by R. Auty and A.E. Pennington to celebrate the seventieth birthday of the first professor of comparative Slavonic philology at Oxford in 1968. The collection shows the great range of Prof Unbegaun's interest, from toponyms and ethnonyms to the travels of Englishmen in early modern Russia to the development of literature.
As a student of historical linguistics ever fascinated by the Slavonic languages, not all of the papers here are within my field of interest. Nonetheless, I should like to comment on several of them. "Les noms de la neige en roumain" is a very engaging presentation of the dialectal division between "nea" in Transylvania (from Latin), and "omat" in Moldavia and "zapada" in Wallachia (Slavonic loans). "Zapada" is a Slavic loan with an original nowhere to be found, and Unbegaun suggests that the Slavonic languagues did have a similar word, which can be glimpsed in a few stock phrases, and Romanian borrowed it and ran with it.
"The Language of Muscovite Russia in Oxford Vocabularies" uses the manuscript vocabularies of two Englishmen in Russia, Mark Ridley (1599) and Richard James (1618-20) to evaluate the language of the time independently of the lexically limited literary tradition. Mundane matters such as the word for "dust", as well as bawdy language, are missing from chancelery materials, but it's quite amusing to read of the reports of a court physician and an Anglican priest on Russian thieves' cant and houses of ill repute. James gives some useful information on playing cards which Unbegaun uses in another article, "Cards and Card-Playing in Muscovite Russia".
Two papers here are concerned with toponyms, "Les nomes des villes russes: la mode slavonne", which discusses the seemingly random mix of native Russian and Church Slavonic elements in Russia city names, and "les nomes de villes russes: la mode grecque". In another paper Unbegaun is concered with the names of peoples, for "L' origine du nom des Ruthenes" gives an interesting tour of Western ethnonyms for the inhabitants of Rus' before showing how "Ruthenian" is a fairly late term developed in Poland.
If you study Slavonic philology or even just general historical linguistics, I'd recommend taking a look at the table of contents here to see if anything interests you. Unbegaun is an entertaining author, and I found it worthwhile to flip through these pages.
As a student of historical linguistics ever fascinated by the Slavonic languages, not all of the papers here are within my field of interest. Nonetheless, I should like to comment on several of them. "Les noms de la neige en roumain" is a very engaging presentation of the dialectal division between "nea" in Transylvania (from Latin), and "omat" in Moldavia and "zapada" in Wallachia (Slavonic loans). "Zapada" is a Slavic loan with an original nowhere to be found, and Unbegaun suggests that the Slavonic languagues did have a similar word, which can be glimpsed in a few stock phrases, and Romanian borrowed it and ran with it.
"The Language of Muscovite Russia in Oxford Vocabularies" uses the manuscript vocabularies of two Englishmen in Russia, Mark Ridley (1599) and Richard James (1618-20) to evaluate the language of the time independently of the lexically limited literary tradition. Mundane matters such as the word for "dust", as well as bawdy language, are missing from chancelery materials, but it's quite amusing to read of the reports of a court physician and an Anglican priest on Russian thieves' cant and houses of ill repute. James gives some useful information on playing cards which Unbegaun uses in another article, "Cards and Card-Playing in Muscovite Russia".
Two papers here are concerned with toponyms, "Les nomes des villes russes: la mode slavonne", which discusses the seemingly random mix of native Russian and Church Slavonic elements in Russia city names, and "les nomes de villes russes: la mode grecque". In another paper Unbegaun is concered with the names of peoples, for "L' origine du nom des Ruthenes" gives an interesting tour of Western ethnonyms for the inhabitants of Rus' before showing how "Ruthenian" is a fairly late term developed in Poland.
If you study Slavonic philology or even just general historical linguistics, I'd recommend taking a look at the table of contents here to see if anything interests you. Unbegaun is an entertaining author, and I found it worthwhile to flip through these pages.
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