28-04-2020, 10:56 AM
Thank you, Rene!
I agree that all the bullets in your list are well worth exploring. A good thing about this hobby is that it appears to be inexhaustible...
About this specific point:
I think that palaeographers could be more qualified than linguists about this particular issue. As I see it, spelling variants correspond to identical linguistic entities.
If I understand correctly what you write about the phenomenon only occurring in vernaculars, you imply that Latin manuscripts had no spelling variants. Do you consider abbreviations something entirely different from spelling variants?
We know that in Latin manuscripts the same word type could be expressed in different ways because most (all?) manuscripts were abbreviated and abbreviations were often used inconsistently.
A while ago I carefully studied ten pages from a Swiss copy of a Latin text by Bonaventura (discussed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). By comparing the handwritten text with a printed edition, I found out that the handwritten text has many more apparent word types than the printed edition (1371 vs 1107). You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I pointed out three different variants of "secundum".
This is an example of two different variants of "omnis" (each occurring twice):
Another phenomenon that I tend to assimilate to "spelling variation" is arbitrary spacing. This of course contributes to creating spurious word types.
For instance, I transcribed the first fragment as "ineam", while the second looks like "in ea". Instead of the two common types "in" and "eam", the first fragment results in an illusory new word type.
One of the great merits of the transliteration you produced together with Landini is making clear how extensive this phenomenon is in the VMS (8% of the spaces between words are marked as uncertain).
I agree that all the bullets in your list are well worth exploring. A good thing about this hobby is that it appears to be inexhaustible...
About this specific point:
(28-04-2020, 04:37 AM)ReneZ wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.- the impact of spelling variants could be looked at, but such variants should only be expected for the vernaculars (a linguist should be able to say more about that).
I think that palaeographers could be more qualified than linguists about this particular issue. As I see it, spelling variants correspond to identical linguistic entities.
If I understand correctly what you write about the phenomenon only occurring in vernaculars, you imply that Latin manuscripts had no spelling variants. Do you consider abbreviations something entirely different from spelling variants?
We know that in Latin manuscripts the same word type could be expressed in different ways because most (all?) manuscripts were abbreviated and abbreviations were often used inconsistently.
A while ago I carefully studied ten pages from a Swiss copy of a Latin text by Bonaventura (discussed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). By comparing the handwritten text with a printed edition, I found out that the handwritten text has many more apparent word types than the printed edition (1371 vs 1107). You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I pointed out three different variants of "secundum".
This is an example of two different variants of "omnis" (each occurring twice):
Another phenomenon that I tend to assimilate to "spelling variation" is arbitrary spacing. This of course contributes to creating spurious word types.
For instance, I transcribed the first fragment as "ineam", while the second looks like "in ea". Instead of the two common types "in" and "eam", the first fragment results in an illusory new word type.
One of the great merits of the transliteration you produced together with Landini is making clear how extensive this phenomenon is in the VMS (8% of the spaces between words are marked as uncertain).