A study of the occurrence of genus alternans in the St. Gall material of Chartae Latinae Antiquiores
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to describe the main properties of gender confusions in the private legal charters of St Gall from the 8th century. The most important question is whether the so-called genus alternans (alternating gender) was present and used in this region during the period under study. To answer this question, all nouns displaying non-standard agreement patterns were checked in the charters. This led to some nouns which could be connected to a developing genus alternans. This evidence is not conclusive, but it will aid future research in describing this gender.
References
ChLA I: Bruckner, Albert – Marichal, Robert (eds) (1954), Chartae Latinae Antiquiores. Facsimile edition of the Latin charters prior to the ninth century. Part I. Switzerland: Basle – St. Gall. Urs Graf Verlag, Olten – Lausanne.
ChLA II: Bruckner, Albert – Marichal, Robert (eds) (1956), Chartae Latinae Antiquiores. Facsimile edition of the Latin charters prior to the ninth century. Part II. Switzerland: St. Gall – Zürich. Urs Graf Verlag, Olten – Lausanne.
LLDB Adatbázis: Császárkori latin feliratok számítógépes nyelvtörténeti adatbázisa. Budapest. http://lldb.elte.hu/ (Utolsó elérés: 2025. szeptember 25).
TLL: Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Teubner, később De Gruyter, Leipzig, később Berlin.
Adamik, Béla (2012), In search of the regional diversification of Latin: Some methodological considerations in employing the inscriptional evidence. In: Biville, Frédérique – Lhommé, Marie-Karine – Vallat, Daniel (eds), Latin vulgaire – latin tardif IX. Actes du IXe colloque international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif, Lyon 2–6 septembre 2009. MOM Éditions. Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, Lyon. 123–139.
Corbett, Greville G. (1991), Gender. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139166119
Gallagher, Robert – Roberts, Edward – Tinti, Francesca (eds) (2021), The languages of early medieval charters: Latin, Germanic vernaculars, and the written word. Brill, Leiden – Boston.
Haubrichs, Wolfgang (2021), The multilingualism of the Early Middle Ages: Evidence from peripheral regions of the Regnum orientalium Francorum. In: Gallagher et al. (eds) 2021: 68–116.
Herman, József (1990), Du latin aux langues romanes. Études de linguistique historique, réunies par Sándor Kiss. Niemeyer, Tübingen.
Herman József (2003), Vulgáris latin. Az újlatin nyelvek kialakulásának útja. Tinta Könyvkiadó, Budapest.
Korkiakangas, Timo (2018), Spoken Latin behind written texts: Formulaicity and salience in medieval documentary texts. Diachronica 35: 429–449.
Korkiakangas, Timo (2024), A linguist’s viewpoint: formulaic language as a challenge for historical linguistics. Republic, Amsterdam. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10461848
Loporcaro, Michele (2018), Gender from Latin to Romance: history, geography, typology. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Loporcaro, Michele – Faraoni, Vincenzo – Gardani, Francesco (2014), The third gender of Old Italian. Diachronica 31: 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.31.1.01gar
Loporcaro, Michele – Paciaroni, Tania (2011), Four-gender systems in Indo-European. Folia Linguistica 45: 389–433. https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.2011.015
Maiden, Martin (2016), The Romanian alternating gender in diachrony and synchrony. Folia Linguistica 37: 111–144. https://doi.org/10.1515/flih-2016-0004
Pálfi Dorottya (2023), Demonstratives in the charters of St. Gall. Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 63: 525–559. https://doi.org/10.1556/068.2024.00125
Papini, Alessandro (2022), Ipsa Latinitas et regionibus cotidie mutetur et tempore: some methodological considerations on the use of Herman’s quantitative method. Listy Filologicke 145: 343–378.
Szlovicsák, Béla (2022), Preliminary examination of the Latin neuter on inscriptions. Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 62: 419–434. https://doi.org/10.1556/068.2023.00078
Szlovicsák, Béla (2023), Gender confusions and other linguistic changes: A provisional description of Vulgar Latin phenomena. Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 63: 575–594. https://doi.org/10.1556/068.2024.00123
Väänänen, Veikko (1981), Introduction au latin vulgaire. Klincksieck, Paris.
Wang, Ziven (2023), Pérdida del género neutro del latín al hispanorromance altomedieval: una reconstrucción panrománica. Tesis doctoral, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Zeller, Bernhard (2021), Language, formulae, and Carolingian reforms: The case of the Alemannic charters from St Gall. In: Gallagher et al. (eds) 2021: 154–187.
