Citations
Citations are given in the same format as prepared and described by Harris-Northall and Nitti in the CD-ROM publication: Peter Boyd-Bowman’s Léxico hispanoamericano 1493-1993 (Eds. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti. Technical development by Jean E. Lentz. New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 2003-2007. Version 2.0. April 2007). For those interested in the construction and history of the Boyd-Bowman project, Léxico hispanoamericano, there is information under History of the Project on the About tab on this website. The following information, cited from the original User’s Guide, pertains to the present web-based project.
“The original orthography of the citations, with the exception of punctuation and accentuation (see below), has been respected throughout. Users should bear in mind, however, that among some of the earlier material both edited and unedited sources have been used, and in some cases editors chose to modernize or otherwise adapt the orthography of the original texts; it is therefore important for users with an interest in linguistic aspects of the citations that might be reflected in the orthography to consult the bibliographic details of specific sources to determine whether they have been edited or are transcriptions of unedited material.
"Modern accentuation and punctuation have been added to the citations in which they were lacking. There are several reasons for this: in the case of accentuation, it was imperative to create some degree of consistency in order to facilitate searches for items in context. For the same reason, the rules of accentuation followed are those of the Spanish Royal Academy’s Ortografía de la lengua española (Madrid: Espasa, 1999) with one exception: these latest academic guidelines require the removal of the accent from verb forms when enclitic pronouns are adjoined to them, as in me levanté but levanteme, le sucedió but sucediole; in the LHA such accent marks are maintained (as previous Academic orthographies recommended), thus levantéme and sucedióle, in order to preserve a consistent orthographic representation for the verb form and improve search capabilities.
"As regards punctuation, it was essential to follow modern practice in citations from the earliest periods in order to guarantee comprehensibility for the user. Moreover, citations are often duplicated under two or more headwords, and in those that run to some length sections may be elided: though such elision does not compromise the comprehensibility of syntactic constituents, it was sometimes necessary to adjust the punctuation of the citation for the sake of clarity. For the same reasons, word separation has been adjusted to the modern standard and most abbreviations have been expanded.
"Other than in accentuation and punctuation, editorial intervention of any kind within a citation is enclosed in parentheses. This is true of ellipses, which are marked as (...), of words inserted in order to clarify meaning, and of suggested corrections to forms which are not only erroneous but would also be incomprehensible for many modern readers. Such corrections are introduced, immediately after the erroneous form and always within parentheses, by por. Editorial intervention has nevertheless been kept to a minimum, and flagrant errors within a source have been allowed to stand in the citation, since it was impossible in many cases to decide whether a non-standard spelling or an apparently ungrammatical construction, particularly in early texts, were entirely insignificant or might reflect faithfully on a speaker’s linguistic usage.
"All of these editorial criteria share a common foundation, which is to respect in every possible way the language that is documented in the LHA. It is hoped that the user will find it easy and convenient to develop the necessary familiarity with its structure” (User’s Guide 8-9).
Each citation displayed in the search results is followed by information identifying its source, represented by a 3-letter code. Complete identification of the texts and their corresponding abbreviations is provided in the Source Abbreviation and Text Title guide. Within a source, the location of the citation is typically identified by page number, preceded —if relevant— by a volume number; in the case of periodical publications, date of publication is provided, together with section number, if appropriate.