É. Apor (ed.): Codex Cumanicus. Ed. by Géza Kuun with a Prolegomena to the Codex Cumanicus by Lajos Ligeti. (Budapest Oriental Reprints, Ser. B 1.)

L. Ligeti: Prolegomena to the Codex Cumanicus

PROLEGOMENA TO THE CODEX CUMANICl'S 15 digms complete each other. The second part contains the Coman equivalents of each Latin verbal form, in contrast to the Italian part, in which the Persian and Coman equivalents of the more complex verbal forms are missing. The (fragmentary) alphabetic listing of the substantives in the «German» part is conspicuous. It allows for the suggestion that the grammatical material of the «German» part also derives from another written text, copied or dictated. Thus, this part must have had a written source just like the grammar of the Italian part had

. The sources of the two parts were apparently similar but by no means identical; the author of the Italian part drew on the whole (however imperfectly), while the compiler of the second part only randomly selected from it. The grammatical outline (and its variant), which served as a model, however, did not aim at teaching the Latin language, since it ignored certain characteristic features of Latin like the grammatical genders, classes of verbal conjugations, and nominal declensions, etc. The obvious purpose of the sketch was to assist persons with a perfect command of Latin to learn Oriental languages which lacked the above grammatical categories. The three-column format facilitated the orientation in the material. Latin, the language of mediaeval erudition, was most probably chosen because it was also the written language of the Black Sea colonies of Genoa, Venice, and other Italian cities.

1

8 Besides the Codex Cumanicus there is no other example of a polyglot Oriental grammar and dictionary compiled for interpreters on the basis of the Latin language. In the Mongol period, primarily in the 14th century, the Arabic language had a similar function. With the triple categories of the Arabic grammardictionary (verb, substantive, particule) in view, scholars tried to treat the Turkish, Persian, Mongolian, and sometimes even the Armenian and Byzantine Greek tongues, either in bilingual, or in plovglot form. These works also list the verbs in (Arabic) alphabetic order, and classified the substantives (including a chapter on adjectival antinomies) according to subjects. The group of particula includes the pronouns, adverbs, etc.

1

9 It is noteworthy that their 1

8 G. I. Br&tianu, Actes des notaires Génois de Péra et de Gaffa de la fin du treizième siècle (1281 — 1291

), Bucarest 1927. M. Balard, Génes et VOutre-Mer /., Les Actes de Coffa du notaire Lamberto di Sambuceto, 1289—1290, Paris—La-Haye 1973. G. L. Fr. TafelG. N. Tomas, Urkunden zur àlteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte der Pepublik Venedig, mit besonderer Beziehung auf Byzanz und die Levante. Vom neunten bis 7.urti Ausgang des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts. Zweite Abteilung: Diplomat aria et Acta XIII —XIV (Wien 1856 — 1857). Fontes Perum Austriacarum. These Latin documents are not totally void of Italianisms. Even so, the Genoan records spanning a very short time provide a large number of idiosyncracies, good specimens of which can be found in Br&tianu, op.cit. pp. 7-11. 1

9 The tripartition of the Arabic lexicon can be found in most compendia: fi'I «verb», ism «substantive», harf «particula»; cf. J. A. Haywood—H. M. Nahmad, A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language, London 1965, p. 327. The structure of the well-