Els noms dels senyals d'orelles del bestiar: un codi lèxic sard en els Registres de bestiar viu de l'Alguer dels segles XVII al XIX

Abstract

This article deals with the documentation and linguistic analysis of a lexical corpus containing the names of animal earmarks that appear in livestock registers housed in the Arxiu Històric Municipal de l'Alguer (Municipal Historical Archive of Alghero) and dated between 1665 and 1820. The registers contain authorization to graze large and small animals in Algherese territory and describe the mandatory earmarks and brands used to show ownership. Despite the fact that these documents were written initially in Catalan (between the last third of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century) and later in Castilian (between the second third of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century), the corpus is originally Sardinian and has been preserved in Algherese unchanged for almost four hundred years in an impenetrable code common to other areas of Sardinia, with only a few diatopic phonetic variations. The corpus contains 14 names, 10 of which are still in Algherese and 8 have been recorded in the ALDC.