The Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón (DiCCA-XV) is the result of several research projects of the philological Grup d'Història i Contacte de Llengües (GHCL)¹ of the Faculty of Philology at University of Barcelona. Our intention is to encourage and facilitate the scientific community the further analysis on a particular language form: Spanish used in the Crown of Aragon in the fifteenth century, a linguistic variant that, because of living with Catalan and Aragonese, on the one hand, and of latinism innovations coming from the kingdom of Naples, on the other, became basic for the study of linguistic changes from medieval Castilian to the Renaissance language.
 

We always start from incunabula or manuscripts written or published in the Crown of Aragon during the fifteenth century, and transcribed directly from the preserved originals. In the transcription, we respect the original spelling and punctuation, but we develope abbreviations and we regularize the use of capital letters in proper names.
 

The corpus, consisting of original works and translations, contains both literary texts and non-literary texts with 2,234,436 occurrences. All of the texts are completely incorporated in our corpus, except in the case of the Cancioneros, of which we selected only works of authors from the Aragonese court of Alfonso the Magnanimous or its environment, and we have avoided the repetition of those that have appeared in other cancioneros.
 

The dictionary analyzes all terms of the text, including proper names. However, the information of DiCCA-XV has different characteristics depending on whether the lexical units are common vocabulary or onomastics.

 

Lexicographic criteria

1. The common vocabulary structure is organized as follows:

1.1. We first list the lemma of each of the dictionary entries. In cases of homonymy, each of the themes is accompanied by a superscript.

1.1.1. The lemma brings together the different ways you can introduce a term by its mor­pho­logical structure, according to the lexicographical tradition: gender and number in the nominal elements (determiners, nouns and adjectives), mode, time, person and number in verbal ones. In the personal pronouns, however, we grouped the forms of the nominative, accusative and dative under a single theme considering the nature of grammatical variation case.
1.1.2. The form of the lemma corresponds to the current spelling, but you can also search throught the medieval  variants, in this case according to the graphic standards of the time (without accents, dieresis, etc..).

1.1.3. Under the same term there are also grouped all formal variants of the word, both phonetic and graphic (artificio/arteficio, banyar/bañar/vañar, barca/barqua, bermejo/mermejo, burla/bulra, cosa/cossa, ideota/ydiota...), when they have the same etymology, and in the corpus, the same semantic value.

Masculine or feminine nouns with the feature [+animate] and the romance gender regularly formed (ayo-a, emperador-ora) have a single entry marked with the function sust. masc. / fem. In contrast, irregular feminine nouns directly derived from a Latin form have separate entrance (dea, emperatriz).
When the formation of the term involves different derivational morphemes (aclarecer/esclarecer, descomulgar/excomulgar; calor/calura, carnoso/carnudo, descontentación/descontentamiento...), or when the terms are the result of different voice processes (popular words, cultisms or loanings), or its evolution is typical of systems other than Castilian –Catalan, Aragonese– (coger/co­llir/collegir, canonigo/canonje) we offer different entries of each of the terms, which gives evidence of the existence of lexical variation in the corresponding tab.

Not lexicalized diminutive and augmentative forms (boca/boquica, poco/poquito, alto/altísimo) are con­sidered formal variants of the same lemmas, as they part from the same lexical root. When the radicals of terms are different, we separate their entries (agudo / acutísimo). Also in this case, lexical variants are pro­vided. 

1.1.4. Latin idioms are highlighted in italics and appear globally in a single entry sorted by the first element (ab intestate, ipso facto). The Castilian phrases, however, are grouped under the term we consider the core part of the expression (de balde, bien que, boca ayuso, censal muerto). The verbal phrases are grouped under the lemma of the nominal part that they contain (dar alas, perder la cabeza, haber a corazón, hacerse fuerte). Proverbial phrases are grouped under the banner of the first lexical containing (no te metas entre cebolla y su cuero, si te dieren la cabrilla acorre con tu soguilla).

1.2. We briefly quote the etymology proposed in the Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico (DCECH) by J. Corominas (with the collaboration of J.A. Pascual). In the case of some catalanisms, we used the Diccionari etimològic i complementari de la llengua catalana (DECLE) by Joan Coromines and the Diccionari català-valencià-balear by Alcover-Moll. For Arabisms we consulted the data of the Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberoromance (DA) by Federico Corriente.

We give the date of first documentation of each item in the corpus and the date of the first documentation cited in DCECH and in CORDE. When the word does not appear in the DCECH, or (as in many derivatives) the date of first documentation is not mentioned, there are signs "Ø" or "s.f.", respectively. The words that, according to CORDE, appear in a single document from the thirteenth century and do not occur again until 150 or 200 years later, have the first date marked with an asterisk followed by the date of reappearance.

1.3. When the term appears in the Castilian part of the Nebrija's  Lexicon or Dictionarium ex sermone latino (BNM. INC/1778(1): Nebrija Lex1 1492) or as an entry in the Dictionarium ex hispaniensi in latinum sermonem or Vocabulario español latín (BNM. INC/1778(2): Nebrija Voc1 ca. 1495), both contemporary dictionaries of our texts, the corresponding entry is reproduced. When terms only appear as a Latin lemma in the Lexicon, they will be preceded by an asterisk. When the word is not listed as an entry in the Vocabulario, but appears in the definition of another word, the corresponding entry is played. And some information is also provided when it is a term added, deleted or modified in the Spanish part of the second edition of the Vocabulario (BC. Res.696-4: Nebrija Voc², 1513).
1.4. We provided a list of all terms related by the same etymological base.

1.5. The absolute and relative frequencies of the word in our corpus are provided.

1.6. All formal variants are outlined. The number of occurrences of each variant appears in parenthesis. 
1.7. Grammatical forms are specified in alphabetical order, wth the number of occurrences.

1.8. Finally, we define the various meanings of the word.

1.8.1. For each of the words we specify both its function and its meaning, based on the actual usage in the texts.

1.8.1.1. In the definitions of lexical items, we have defined using a hyperonimical structure in order to facilitate further searches of semantically related voices.

1.8.1.2. In the case of nouns, nouns that have differentiated between gender variation in relation to certain characteristics of the referent (amigo -a, gato-a), they will be marked as a sust. masc./fem., and those unrelated to the referent that may have alternating gender (blancor, dote) will be marked as sust. masc. o fem.

1.8.1.3. In the case of the adjectives, we mark in brackets the noun it applies to when it has an exclusive value:

rucio: [Caballería] que tiene el pelo de color mezclado de blanco y pardo claro.

1.8.1.4. In the case of the verbs, we always express the arguments (<subject> [object]). In case of intransitive verbs with transitive uses (with internal accusative or intrinsic additions), these will be marked as a verbo intrans./ (trans.) and have the object in parenthesis:

altercar: verbo intrans./(trans.). Discutir <varias personas> violentamente ([algo]).

We also mark those transitive verbs as a verbo trans./(intrans.) that have absolute uses, in this case, with the brackets in parenthesis to indicate the possibility of semantic integration of the object:

beber: verbo trans./(intrans.). Tomar <una persona o un animal> ([)un líquido(]).

1.8.2. The senses are ordered according to their semantic and functional value, from primary values ​​to semantic or functional derivatives.

1.8.3. The phrases appear under fundamental values, and are arranged according to their function (noun phrases, adverbal phrases, prepositional phrases and conjunctive phrases, in that order). The verbal phrases appear last. 

When a term is part of a multiword unit, we annote this fact and cite corresponding examples. Their semantic value is specified on the lemma (cf. 1.1.4), to which it refers.

1.8.4. In the case of words and phrases from other languages ​​(usually Latin or Catalan) we provide only the Spanish equivalent (in italics).

1.8.5. We provide, furthermore, the occurrences of each of the meanings and their distribution in the five text types.

1.8.6. For each meaning we cite five examples, if possible, one of each of the five included text types.

1.8.7. We cite lexical variants of each of the meanings, as well as synonyms of the items in the corpus.

2. The structure of onomastic entries is the following one:

2.1. The lemma. When two identic forms are identified as different words, they are treated similarly to the cases of homonymy in the common lexicon, with an entry for each form, with a different superscript.

2.2. We do not study the etymology of the term and the etymological family. We just quote the date of first documentation in our corpus.

2.3. If the term (or any of its components in the case of complex terms) appears in any of the Nebrija dictionaries, which do include proper names in its first edition, we reproduce the respective entry.

2.4. We present the quantitative data related to the frequency of the term, its formal variants and its distribution in the texts.

2.5. For each term there is provided a brief encyclopedic information if it has been found. Occasionally, however, we can only provide information derived from our corpus.

2.6. Finally, five examples are cited, chosen with similar criteria that have been applied for the common lexicon.
 

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¹ The Grup d'Història i Contacte de Llengües (GHCL)  is recognized as a Grup Consolidat de Recerca by the DGR of the Generalitat de Catalunya (2005SGR01088 and 2009SGR2), made this dictionary thanks to the following aids from the National General Knowledge Program / Ministry of Science and Innovation: PB981223, BFF200200898, FFI200803333/FILO and HUM2005048929.