CHWP B.15 Merrilees, "Medieval Dictionary Entry"

3. Hugutio of Pisa and Johannes Balbus of Genoa

The next two great lexicographers in the medieval chain are Hugutio of Pisa (12th c.), author of the Magnæ Derivationes, and Johannes Balbus of Genoa (13th c.), author of the Catholicon, the first the principal source for the second. Both works take some content and methods from Papias.[4]

The grand principle of organisation for Hugutio is, as the name of his text implies, the linking of words derivationally, a methodology that has the very obvious result of increasing the use of derivational connectors such as inde, unde, prepositions ab and ex. These usually occur in the post-definitional position and lead to the introduction of a new subheadword. Along with the derivational connectors there is also an increase in the frequency of the definitional connector .i. (id est), used post-lemmatically, in most cases after the derived subheadword. Overall there is an increase, compared to Papias, in the provision of information concerning derivation and composition, although Papias shows examples in both PL and PD positions. The derivational emphasis is carried over to Balbus who introduces a greater degree of alphabetization than Hugutio while preserving many of the derivational links.[5]

Despite the more discursive nature of their two texts, Hugutio and Balbus use the same positions as we have noted for Papias, except the marginal, and for very similar kinds of information. Balbus, as we note in this example, uses the post-lemmatic position in particular for etymological information, while in Hugutio these links are more often conveyed by unde in the post-definitional position. What is less frequent in both is the simple juxtaposition of headword + definition, the L + D structure that was so prevalent in Papias. The discursive nature of the organisation of these texts renders them less easily divisible into fields and I have not attempted yet to analyse them along the lines of the Papias material.

[Return to table of contents] [Continue]


Notes

[4] The texts used for this analysis were Hugutio 1925 and Balbus 1971.

[5] In the following excerpts the relevant metalanguage is enclosed within braces.