Science in Text and Context. The Development of French Medical Terminology in Evrart de Conty's Problemes against the Background of Medieval Medical Discourse.

This research project seeks to investigate the development of the medical vocabulary in the french medieval translation of pseudo-Aristotle's Problemata Physica. It is the continuation of research project K.U.Leuven OT/05/15, which focused on the development of the Latin medical vocabulary in Bartholomew of Messina's Latin translation of the Greek text (made ca. 1260), resulting in the PhD of Elisabeth Dévière. That vocabulary was studied empirically in relationship to the original text, stressing the influence of Greek medical terminology on the constitution of the Latin equivalents, and was compared with that of contemporary medical texts. Those results can now be linked to the medical terminology developed in Middle French by Evrart de Conty (1382) who translated Bartholomew's text along with Pietro d'Abano's Latin commentary on that translation, introducing numerous neologisms. Indeed, Evrart's medical vocabulary has a great impact on the development of scientific, viz. medical French vocabulary, words like 'inflammation' used by him for the first time still existing today. This project will gather all existing material and, within this scope, analyse Evrart's neologisms (not fully exploited yet); it will examine their place in the context of medieval and later, up to modern French medical discourse, and point out the function of Evrart de Conty's medical discourse in the construction of a new culture.

Keywords:Medical vocabulary, Translation studies, French diachronic linguistics, French diachronic lexicology

Disciplines:Linguistics, Theory and methodology of linguistics, Other languages and literary studies, Theory and methodology of literary studies