Abstract

This article, embedded in the field of Philology —with an historical approach and a linguistic viewpoint— and in the history of the Spanish language, discusses the acceptability of the examples presented as copyist errors in two of the most renowned manuals in Spanish textual criticism, namely, Manual de crítica textual (1983, 2001) by Alberto Blecua, and La edición de textos (2011) by Miguel Ángel Pérez Priego (for Pérez Priego, see Arellano’s observations in his review, 1997). The analysis of the cases and their documentation from different sources —critical editions and metalinguistic works— enables the conclusion that several of the so-called errors in these manuals are in fact legitimate, historically-documented linguistic variations, although some of them being scarcely testified.

Abstract

This study analyzes part of the lexicon of «Book Sixteen» and «Book Seventeen» of the Comentarios de Erudición by Bartolomé Jiménez Patón, in light of the discovery, a decade ago, of volume four of this great work that constitutes a compendium of the writings of the prolific Manchegan author. The data gathered indicate that our author’s lexicon is characterized by a curious duality: it is at the same time conservative, to the extent that it continues to resort to words and acceptations that doubtless were considered to be archaic in standard Spanish; and it is innovative as well, incorporating established Golden Age neologisms and occasionally introducing new meanings for extant words, as well as inventing new words of his own.