A Few Remarks on Textological and Methodological Problems in the Study of Old Croatian Legal Terms Used by Marko Marulić

Abstract

The article discusses the probability of the known assumption that Marko Marulić studied law. It reviews previous attempts to discuss the legal termino-logy in Marulić’s Croatian works. In the existing literature it is sometimes implied (and sometimes even explicitely stated) that Marulić used this termino-logy because he was a lawyer. In order to establish whether this conclusion can be reinforced or refuted, Marulić’s Croatian works are closely examined to collect potential legal terms. Finally, the methodological problems, limitations, but also possibilities for the improvement of such philological research are discussed. It is concluded that the current state of the art (lack of some more gen¬eral language studies and lack of diachronic machine-readable corpora) makes it extremely difficult to build up a case to support to a satisfying degree the hypothesis that Marulić studied law.

Keywords

• Marko Marulić
• Old Croatian legal terminology
• methodology
• textology
• historical sociolinguistics