Livelli di rappresentazione del testo nell’edizione del De nomine di Orso Beneventano

Abstract

This paper presents the methodological and technological rationale of the scholarly digital edition of the De nomine by Ursus Beneventanus (http://www.unipa.it/paolo.monella/ursus), a proof of concept of methodological innovations introduced by Tito Orlandi. The proposed model goes beyond the dichotomy between diplomatic and interpretative edition. The transcription layers are defined on the basis of semiotic considerations. This edition includes three layers: (1) A graphematic layer, whose minimal units are graphemes, including paragraphematic signs (such as punctuation) and systematic one-glyph abbreviations (such as ꝑ for per). All graphemes identified by the editor are listed in a Graphematic Table of Signs (GToS), a functional part of the edition. (2) An alphabetic layer, whose minimal units are alphabetic letters. The GToS provides the standard alphabetic meaning of graphemes. The editor encodes the alphabetic transcription explicitly (within <expan>) only when the software cannot generate it based on the graphematic transcription through the grapheme/alphabetic letter mapping in the GToS. (3) A linguistic layer, whose minimal units are inflected words (<w>), identified through a lemma/morphology combination: the lemma (e.g. lupus, -i) is encoded with the attribute @lemma; morphological information (e.g. genitive singular), with the attribute @ana. This layer is for interpretative visualization, textual analysis, interoperability and collation. A final section of the paper analyzes the strong and weak points of the Ursus edition and discusses strategies to expedite the workflow, in view of the future edition of the Chronicon by Romualdus Salernitanus.