El empleo de la metalengua en el Vocabulario de Nebrija y su reflejo en los diccionarios de la época

Abstract

The article below attempts to offer an analysis of the employment of the metalanguage in Nebrija’s Vocabulario. This is a methodological peculiarity which characterizes the work and that has not yet been addressed. Nebrija’s lexical repertoire appears to be strewn with certain words that can not be properly characterized as ‘marks of use’. Indeed; the entry-word is often discussed with plenty of explanations and romance clarifications that; at times; are introduced by particles of the metalanguage. Not all of them serve the same purpose nor; within a single particle; are all systematized in the same way. But the fact that there is no regularity does not necessarily imply that its use is arbitrary; unsystematic or lacking in justification.
The nature of these words and their systematization is the principal aim of this piece with the goal of clarifying what their job should be; and what the nexus between defined and definition in the revised Vocabulario is. To do this we propose two main themes: the metalexicographical analysis of each particle and the semantic value of the word-entries and their correspondences. We have also checked the results of this approach in the dictionaries of the time.