The language of Enrique de Villena's "Arte cisoria"

Abstract

This dissertation is a descriptive study of the language of Enrique de Villena's Arte cisoria (1423). The short introduction on Villena, the Cisoria, and his other works, is followed by chapters on the phonology, inflectional morphology, derivational morphology, lexicon, and syntax found in the text. The concluding chapter summarizes the study's findings, and contrasts them with other studies of Villena's language (primarily those of Santiago Lacuesta, Pascual, Garbutt-Parrales, and Morreale); and notes differences between Villena's language and the fifteenth century norm. Characteristics of particular interest include the high number of Latinisms and Catalanisms, many of which are first documentations, the appearance of conservative imperfect and conditional forms in -ie, and extreme instances of hyperbaton. The edition used for the linguistic analysis is Russel Vernon Brown's critical edition of the text.