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We present ALMA, a new research project aimed at investigating the interaction between language and knowledge practices from AD 1100 to 1500. Our primary question is how Medieval Italian, French, Occitan, Catalan, and Spanish developed into languages of knowledge and scholarship (German Wissen(schafts)sprachen ) in permanent opposition to and exchange with the predominant Latin (but also with Arab, Greek, and Hebrew). Focusing on two domains, medicine and law, the project combines linguistics, text philology, and the history of science with the Digital Humanities and ontology engineering. ALMA will create two multi-lingual, domain-specific text corpora by integrating text editions of hitherto unedited manuscripts and incunabula, and digitized printed editions. Our corpus-linguistic exploration of the ALMA corpora will provide the basis for lexical-semantic studies that analyze emerging knowledge networks and the depth of their linguistic representations. We hypothesize that language evolution and the development of more complex linguistic structures will allow for measuring the impact of knowledge practices on medieval vernacular languages. We will trace the dissemination of lexical material across languages, language varieties, cultural spaces, and periods. This will enable us to follow specific vernacular communication channels. We will use cutting-edge technologies to compile, publish, and share our findings, and to model them in the form of historicized ontologies and Linked Data. Our onomasiological, ontology-driven approach will result in the creation of domain models that can be re-used within the Semantic Web. This has great potential to be relevant for researchers from different disciplines.
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