Paul Videsott

Paul Videsott is full professor of Romance philology at the Faculty of Education of the Free University of Bozen- Bolzano.

He received his research doctorate (PhD) in Romance Philology from the University of Innsbruck. In addition to his position at UNIBZ, he is scientific director of the South Tyrolean Institute of Ethnic Groups, president of the scientific commission of the Ladin Institute "Majon di Fascegn" in Vigo di Fassa, editor-in-chief of the series Scripta Ladina Brixinensia and of the Europäisches Journal für Minderheitenfragen / European Journal on Minority Issues,and co-editor of the Revue de Linguistique Romane. A long-time contributor to the MLA International Bibliography as a field indexer, he is currently serving a term on the Bibiography’s Advisory Committee.

The project

Title: Atlas of the forms and constructions of 14th-century French charters.

One of the most important research tools for the linguistic history of French remains the famous Atlas des formes et des constructions des chartes françaises du XIIIe siècle. Tübingen: Niemeyer [Beihefte zur ZrP, 178] by Anthonij Dees (1980). He had the merit of demonstrating that the French linguistic space of the time was far from unitary, but was structured into at least two major scriptological spaces - one western and the other eastern - and that within these, there existed a series of scriptae that were clearly identifiable on the basis of graphico-morphological criteria.
Dees' atlas stops in the thirteenth century, because it was thought that scriptological standardisation had already taken over by the fourteenth. However, a great deal of subsequent research has shown that this was not the case and that standardisation began to spread in the administrative language in the first half of the 14th century, although it was not complete and definitive by the end of that century. It is therefore possible (and scientifically useful) to draw up a scriptological atlas of the Oïl domain for the 14th century too. The aim of our visit is to collect at least 3,300 French charters from the 14th century in order to create the documentary basis for such an atlas.

Hosting Institution: École nationale des Chartes (PSL)

Selective bibliography

Les Ladins des Dolomites. Crozon (Bretagne): Éditions Armeline (2023) 316 S. [Peuples en péril, 7].

Linguistic and cultural diversity – Minority and minoritised languages as part of European linguistic and cultural diversity. Brussels: Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs (2023) 108 S. [https://doi.org/10.2861/850510]

Le plus ancien document en français de la Prévôté de Paris. Édition et considérations historico-linguistiques. In: Medioevo Romanzo 44 (2020) 281-304.

Manuale di linguistica ladina. Berlin: De Gruyter (2020) 588 S. [Manuals of Romance Linguistics, 26] (with Ruth Videsott and Jan Casalicchio).

Vocabolar dl ladin leterar / Vocabolario del ladino letterario / Wörterbuch des literarischen Ladinischen. Vol. 1: Lessich documenté fin al 1879 / Lessico documentato fino al 1879 / Bis 1879 belegter Wortschatz. Bozen: Bozen-Bolzano University Press (2020) XXXIV + 1237 S. [Scripta Ladina Brixinensia, 5].