Le Dauphin project: a micro-corpus of correspondence in Lapurdian Basque of 1757

Abstract

As a result of a recent discovery, in this contribution the author presents the project of design of a micro-corpus of Basque correspondence of the 18th century. This little corpus reflects the language state of Lapurdian dialect in 1757 with the accuracy given only by spontaneous documents. Firstly, we shall explain the relevance of the finding of this documentation, and then we will proceed to a historical and linguistic contextualization. Then, we shall deal with the nature and contents of the letters, their authors and the linguistic richness of the corpus. Finally, Le Dauphin project will be placed in the context of other corpora, and we shall succinctly expound the works and kind of edition expected.