La variation graphique du français dans les dictionnaires français-espagnol des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles

Abstract

Since the sixteenth century, the orthography inherited from Middle French, highly historical and etymological, was questioned, both in theory and in practice, by the proponents of its simplification. In all kinds of writings, the forms of the old spelling coexisted with those of the new one; hence the orthographic variation inherent in the French of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It can be seen, however, that, in printed texts, many authors opted for one rather than the other of the two graphic models. Starting from these premises, I analyse in this article the predominant orthographic uses in the main French-Spanish dictionaries published at the time.