Les scriptae de l’ancien Velay : essai de caractérisation

The aim of this study is to document the scriptae of the ancient Velay, a historical region belonging to the Northern Occitan linguistic space (Auvergne), which are not represented in the scriptological syntheses on Gallo-Romance. The critical updating of the inventory of texts produced in Velay, initiated by Pierre Nauton for his thesis published posthumously in 1974, allows us today to present the characteristic scriptological features of the written language of this area. Starting from the notion of contrastivity efficient in scriptology, we have in particular proceeded to the systematic comparison of lexemes and grammatical words of the Velay corpus with the lemmas of the DOM (Dictionnaire de l'occitan médiéval), which offers a minimal contrastive basis. From this, it is possible to highlight at least fifty-eight graphic, phonological and morphological features which are the clearest markers of the language of these texts. The results of this study are intended to place Velay in the linguistic historiography of the Gallo-Romance area in a historical perspective. The inventory of texts also provides evidence for a sociolinguistic history of the written varieties in North Occitan up to ca. 1600.