Rerefons lingüístic i mèdic d'un text sobre l'epidèmia de 1678 a Oriola (1: Rerefons lingüístic)

Resumen

This paper is a linguistic study of a medical text concerning an epidemic that broke out in the city of Oriola in 1678. The document provides evidence of the decline of Catalan in the far south of Valencia in modern times. This sociolinguistic situation is clearly manifest from the proper names in the text, which suggest greater Catalan representation among the upper classes as compared to the lower classes, who have a larger number of Castilian surnames. Analysis of the linguistic features of the document point to a highly Castilianized social background, observable both in the annotations in the margin in Castilian, which did not become the official language of the Kingdom of Valencia until 1707, and in the frequent replacement of Castilian forms by Catalan ones. In summary, the text marks an advanced stage in the process of substitution of Catalan by Castilian in Oriola in the last third of the 17th century.