La voz catalana lot en la documentación medieval del dominio lingüístico del catalán: propuesta etimológica y semántica

This paper examines the term lot , a lexical innovation associated with the Celtic root lue , and specific to the early medieval Latin documentation of the Catalan linguistic domain. In the context of the texts and charters from this region domestic livestock is frequently mentioned, primarily in wills, contracts of sale, donations, and ecclesiastical dowries. Drawing on the documentary corpus that underpins the Glossarium Mediae Latinitatis Cataloniae (GMLC), our research identifies the word lot , a term which, to date, is absent both from this glossary and from other lexicographical works specializing in the vocabulary of medieval Latin and early Catalan. On the basis of the evidence gathered in the lexical database of the Corpus Documentale Latinum Cataloniae (CODOLCAT), we propose an etymological and semantic interpretation of the term. Our hypothesis is that this word designates the young bull (sp. novillo ), the offspring of the bull over two years of age, and that is semantically distinct from bos ‘ox’ and uitellus ‘calf’. We also draw on the etymological dictionaries of Wartburg (FEW) and Meyer-Lübke (REW) within the framework of a comparison with related terms in other Romance and Celtic languages, such as Old French and Breton. This study highlights the importance of the medieval Latin corpus as a tool to identify lexical items of pre-literary Catalan that have not survived.