From Petrés to Bigastre: an excursion through the language of Valencian settlement letters from 17th century

Abstract

The town charters of modern period, very abundant in the Valencian Country, mainly as a result of the repopulations that followed the expulsion of the Moriscos (1609), have not been studied so far from a linguistic point of view to a large extent because until a few years ago we did not have a significant repertoire of this type of documents. These are texts of legal linguistic variety that directly affected the life of an important part of the population —also, indirectly, the idea that people could have of their native language. This paper attempts to make a first approach to the study of Valencian town charters from the 17th century, evaluating the degree of persistence of the use of Valencian in these texts, as well as the persistence of traditional linguistic models.