Volume 139, Issue 4

This article examines two Old French corpora related to the Domaine d’Oïl (Northern France) from a dialectometric and scriptometric perspective, which go back to the Romance scholar Anthonij Dees (1928–2001). These are, on the one hand, his atlas of charters published in 1980 ( digiDees 1980 ) and, on the other hand, an electronic corpus created in Salzburg as recently as 2006 ( digiDees 1983 ). This is based on geolocalisation computations of Old French texts (from the 12th and 13th centuries), which, carried out by Dees in 1983, were only rediscovered by chance in Amsterdam in 2006 and subsequently transferred to Salzburg. In addition to these two medieval datasets, dialect data from the French linguistic atlas ALF (“Atlas linguistique de la France”, 1902–1910) are also analysed, which spatially align with the two medieval datasets. The dialectometric and scriptometric analyses carried out on these three electronic corpora aim primarily to compare the spatial depth structures found in them. For this purpose, the following dialectometric map types were examined: similarity maps, parameter maps and isoglottic syntheses. When comparing them, an astonishing similarity of the spatial profiles visible on them emerges. It should be noted, however, that a time span of 600 years lies between the Old French data analysed by Dees and those of the ALF. The spatial similarity of the depth structures found in them is therefore all the more striking.

Visualization of the results is the final and essential step in dialect data analysis. For geographically dispersed data such as dialect data, colorful maps have long been the standard of visualization. The focus is on polygon maps, which can be used to represent contiguous areas particularly well. The Dialectometric visualization of script data is quite similar to the visualization of data from dialect atlases. For this reason, the VDM application (Visual DialectoMetry) can be used for the analysis of text documents from the DocLing 1 corpus with few modifications. After a short tour of the visualizations in VDM and an explanation of the data structure, the focus of this paper is on these modifications and the new features which are currently being added to VDM. This new version of VDM will be better suited for scripta data and will streamline the generation of maps for VDM.

The article illustrates the data geolocalisation procedure used within the project Linguistic variation in the Middle Ages as a system. Basics of a new scriptural description of the Gallo-Romance language area . It starts with some general reflections on linguistic cartography, and in particular a comparison of the characteristics and editing methods of a linguistic atlas representing modern dialect data and one representing medieval scripta data. Afterwards, we discuss the concrete challenges and perspectives within the project itself, which aims at a new carthographic representation of medieval Galloromania forty years after Anthonij Dees’ famous Atlas des formes et des constructions des chartes françaises du 13 e siècle . The focus is placed on the localisation of the basic corpus, which consists in attributing more than 6,000 documents spread over the entire Gallo-Romance domain to a concrete geographical territory, but where the exact location of individual documents often poses problems that can be solved only by considering a number of criteria.

This paper intends to present the first results of the project Mappatura dell’Italo-Romanzo Antico (MIRA) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for the period 2022–2026. The project’s main goal is the mapping of the linguistic situation of Italy before the year 1400. We illustrate one type of linguistic map, the one concerned with single linguistic features (such as the reflexes of Latin vowels, consonants, consonant clusters, etc.), using the outcomes of Latin ‑gn‑ . We show how the geographic distribution of the various reflexes can be displayed graphically and how the data from our principal source, the Atlante Grammaticale della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (AGLIO) can be integrated with the scrutiny of other texts and with secondary bibliography. Furthermore, we discuss critical points regarding the balance of our corpus – in a diachronic, diatopic and diastratic/diaphasic perspective – and the expediency of different solutions for the visualization of our findings.

The Historical Atlas of Spanish (AHE) is a free-access tool on the Internet designed to advance the knowledge of dialectal variation in the history of Spanish. The Atlas consists of a database of structural features (with preferential attention to morphosyntax) extracted from dialectal textual corpora. For each of the structures studied, the results are presented in the form of a brief state of the art illustrated with maps and graphs. The Atlas aims to contribute to the study of linguistic variation and change from a dialect perspective and extract significant generalizations about the diffusion of linguistic changes in the physical space. In this article we present the main methodological issues that have been considered in the process of creating the Historical Atlas of Spanish : contents and structure, data sources, techniques for data extraction and analysis, and the computer application for creating the maps and visualizing the results.

The GeoDocuM project deals with the lexical variation that characterizes the ancient legal documentation written in Latin of continental southern Italy (with particular reference to the area between Campania and central-northern Puglia in a period ranging from the 8th to the 11th century), by testing a geospatial and statistical representation of the textual data. The paper focuses on the methodological issues addressed to enhance the local dimension, which is central in the setting up of the project.

This article studies the role played by illusory magic ( praestigium ), its techniques, the function of secrecy as a necessary condition for it, and its relationship with demonic practices in the Exemplo XI of Don Juan Manuel’s Libro del Conde Lucanor (around 1335). I propose that the function that this particular kind of magic performs constitutes a device to criticize the deep moral crisis that the Church experienced in the fourteenth century as well as the conflict existing between secular power and ecclesiastical authorities for the administration of knowledge.

This article presents a project focusing on French private letters written during the 17th and 18th centuries. As the first French initiative to ever investigate this collection, the project aims to show how the alternative data provided by these letters can broaden the scope by filling the gaps left by traditional historical linguistics, focusing on one of French’s greatest periods of expansion and shedding new light on the dynamics and mechanisms that led to the existing French and creole varieties in America and in the Indian Ocean.

The system of pronouns of address in European Portuguese is made up of several pronouns and strategies, some of which vary depending on sociolinguistic, geographical and pragmatic factors. Despite its complexity, there is lack of empirical research that accounts for the actuality and validity of the paradigm depicted in the grammars. In order to compensate for this lack of information, I aim to set out the system of pronouns of address in the Azores, an area that has up to this point not been subject to investigation. Thanks to specific fieldwork, I will establish the type of politeness that currently predominates in this archipelago and the particularities that are not attested elsewhere in Portugal.

Now in the British Library, MS Harley 5402 is a collection of astrological treatises from different sources. It consists of two groups of texts, with the first, penned by a 12th-century professional Italian scribe, covering folios 1 r -69 r, and the second, added in the 14th century, running from folio 70 r to 104 v . Acting as a watershed between the two parts, folio 69 contains three short texts added by non-professional hands in a deplorable Latin, strongly influenced by the vernacular (Italian and Occitan). – A fourth text, in a variety of Old Italian, was inserted by yet another non-professional hand, with all elements pointing to the city of Pisa in the second half of the 12 th century: this conclusion is supported by the palaeographic analysis carried out in this article. The Old Italian text, La rasione dele littere Julii inperator , discovered by professor Charles Burnett of the Warburg Institute in London, has resisted every attempt at interpretation until the present day: for instance, efforts to link this “method for calculating the letters of Emperor Julius” to the Julian calendar with its Dominical letters have proved fruitless. What is clear, however, is that we are looking at the oldest known specimen of Italian scientific prose.

This paper discusses the hypothesis of a Latin source involvement in the process of translating and transmitting the sixteenth century Romanian Psalters. This hypothesis is based on a few words of Latin origin, called “lexical relics”, that might have been selected by etymological attraction under the influence of a Latin source. The methodological issues, arguments and examples referred to by the supporters of this theory are subjected to a critical analysis based on a textual comparison of the Romanian Psalters and their Slavonic and presumed Latin sources. The complete analysis of such lexemes shows that there are no arguments in favour of this view because: (1) among the “lexical relics” are included words inherited from Latin which do not etymologically overlap with their corresponding word in the Latin versions of the Psalter; (2) if there are etymological concordances between the Romanian and Latin versions, they are always doubled by semantic concordances with the Slavonic source(s), which points to the fact that the etymological concordances can be explained simply by choosing the Romanian semantic correspondent for the Slavonic word; (3) if there are minor semantic differences, they prove a semantic, even etymological, concordance with the Slavonic versions; (4) there is no case of semantic inconsistency between the Romanian lexemes and their corresponding words in the Slavonic sources which a Latin version of the Psalter might explain.