Provençal

The PhiloLogic implementation of the Provençal Database is based on data provided by Professor Akehurst at the University of Minnesota. Spellings are in the orginal representation. Page links get poems numbered from 1 for each author. The database has 415,000 words, 28,500 unique forms, in 38 works.

Search the Provençal Database using PhiloLogic4

Database-Specific Searching Tips:

Bibliographic Searching:

Author: At this time the apostrophe in the author field is not working properly. Thus block-copying a name such as Guilhem de l'Olivier will produce a "No documents found" message. Try searching for the most distinctive string such as Olivier or use a boolean character (e.g. guilhem de l|olivier). Hyphens do work and must be used for accurate results.

Title: Some titles in the Provençal database are quite long and may contain various forms of punctuation and accentuation. In searching the bibliography by title, one should use a minimum number of terms, choosing a term or terms that are unique within the bibliography. At this time the following punctuation marks and symbols produce a "No documents found" message: semi-colons (;), colons (:), and apostrophes ('). Avoid using any of these symbols in the title field (e.g., search for chansons|amour rather than Chansons d'Amour). The following punctuation marks have no adverse effect on a title search and, if appearing within a string, must be entered: hyphen (-), comma (,) and accent marks.

Date: The texts in the database range in date from 1130 to 1300.

Orthographic Considerations:

Leaving off an accent is the equivalent of a misspelled word. One of the ways to handle this problem in cases where the user is unsure about accent, or where the source data varies, is to simply turn on the Cap Lock and type in all uppercase, which will find the characater with OR without the accent. Thus, entering POESIE finds the word poésie as well as poesie, both of which are found in the title field of this database. This is best since accentuation is not always consistent.

Data-Entry Idiosyncrasies:

Several data errors have been detected in some databases either from typesetting errors in the original source or from rekeying the documents. One should definitely avoid making arguments from silence. Fortunately, at this time no errors have been found in the Provençal database.

Punctuation and Full-Text Searching

Apostrophes: It is important to remember that leaving off an apostrophe in the search text(s) for: field is the equivalent of misspelling a word: the search engine will not find it. More importantly, an extra space has been inserted between the apostrophe and the following word which must be taken into consideration when searching. For example, if searching for fin' amors you must include the apostrophe as well as an additional space before the following word. Another way to handle this problem in cases where the user is unsure about the apostrophe, or where the source varies, is to simply use wildcard characters (e.g., fin.* amor.* will retrieve fin' amor and fin' amors).

The ARTFL Project

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