El español del qahal qadoš de Pisa (siglo XVII). Aspectos gráficos e implicaciones fónicas

Abstract

Abstract This paper focuses on the analysis of unpublished documents from volume number 0457 of the Archivio Storico della Comunità Ebrea of Pisa (Italy), the oldest atti civili mammotrect preserved (1660‒1691). In the first critical approach to this corpus, Ariza (2015) studied the letters and their possible phonetic implications, but his work considered the linguistic features of the Pisa book in overall terms. This contribution focuses on the study of the letters from the comparison of different documents, once their 16 authors have been identified. The study is structured in five sections corresponding to the most frequent phenomena, namely, vacillation of unstressed vowels, especially between e / i; the loss of /h/ < Lat. f-, reflected in the lack of the letter h; the merger of voiced bilabials as proof of the use of b for v; and the confusion between /s/ and /θ/ [i.e. seseo]; finally, the merger of /r/ and /ɲ/, two innovations in Judeo-Spanish (Penny 2000). The main goal is to explain to what extent the preserved texts reflect the phonetic variation of the Hebrew community of Pisa in the second half of the 17th century.