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Language Standardization In Eastern France, 1280-1450 :
The project is a longitudinal study of the process of standardization in documents from Lorraine between 1280 and 1450. The main aim is to explore standardization in Lorraine, and to develop a methodology which will provide a model for comparable studies elsewhere in France. The informed consensus is that it was only after 1300 or so that northern French scriptae were significantly influenced by the emerging Paris-based standard. The process whereby this occurred is still not properly understood. A study of documents from one town during the key period of the fourteenth century will provide detailed evidence of how it actually occurred.
The documents span 1280 to 1446. Material from this period has not received much attention, since the emphasis (e.g. in the Documents linguistiques de la France) is on pre-1270 texts. Yet it is obviously only by looking at material after 1300 that the process of standardization after that date can be examined.
The documents to be considered all come from Saint-Dié-des-Vosges (roughly half-way between Epinal and Colmar). This geographical focus on one town largely eliminates the problem of substantial geographical variation within Lorraine, e.g. between Metz, Toul, and the Vosges.
A second aim is to study diaphasic and diastratic variation. Dialectal marking is typically more noticeable in documents from or to those of lower social status. Virtually everything produced in the thirteenth century emanates from either the aristocracy or the church, so that it is (again) only by looking at material after 1300 that the reality of social variation can be meaningfully investigated.
In total, 77 documents from 1280 to 1448 are being transcribed and analysed in detail. They have been selected because they deal with local affairs and represent text-types where scribal tradition and conservatism are marked. When change over time is visible in such texts, it is all the more significant. Finally, all of these documents are likely to be lexically as well as phonetically, morphologically and orthographically, interesting. Qualitative linguistic analysis of the documents will be on well-tried philological and dialectological lines. Quantitative analysis will be aided by the Tübingen TUSTEP programme, which provides bespoke interrogation programmes for documents of this type.
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