I notai bergamaschi tra VIII e XI secolo: schemi lessico-sintattici e costruzione di comunità.

Early medieval notarial texts of sale, exchange and/or donation represent valuable documentation of ‘bottom-up’ writing practices and constitute a relevant ideological and cultural, as well as legal, source. Through the formulaic language that characterises them, they in fact provide information on processes connecting the individual and the social community of the time.
For the centuries analysed here, the structure and content of notarial textual models became increasingly defined as (partly new) local customs were grafted on to Roman models, leading over time to the consolidation of clearly recognisable contractual types (Gasparri 2016, Nicolaj 1996; see also D'Argenio and Ghezzi in press).
In this transition, notaries and scribes act as intermediaries who, by developing skills in writing and creating textual models, enable communication between the different participants in the ‘public’ discourse. The work of the community of practice of notaries focuses on shared goals and practices, specific communicative models, and linguistic formats that guarantee the continuity of legal ‘discourse’ (Putzu 2021: 71). At the same time, through specific linguistic choices and textual practices, notaries also contribute to the creation of a community of text in the documents produced, which is not bound by common practices and goals, but rather by texts that are referred to, addressed and used by its members. It is in fact a community that identifies and engages with each other in social activities precisely through the text (Putzu 2021).
These references become the shared repertoire of referential tools.
Starting from these theoretical and methodological assumptions, this study considers how document writers respond in their texts to the needs of the local text community, representing the community itself and its members through specific linguistic formulae that have a clear link with the members of the same community.
By means of a community- and corpus-based approach on notarial documents produced in the area of Bergamo between the 8th and 11th centuries, are analysed the most repeated and recurrent lexico-syntactic bundles that refer to the addresees and users of texts, as well as to the people somehow directly involved in the contracts (Kopaczyk 2012a, 2012b).
The approach used for data extraction integrates quantitative analyses, relating to the number of occurrences of such expressions, and qualitative analyses, which identify subgroups of participants in legal discourse. The data analysis shows that it is possible to identify (a) general references to authority and community (e.g. dom(nis) nostris Desiderio et Adelcho veris exccellentissimis regis; de ordine sancte Bergo[mensis] Eclesie); (b) specific references to the community (e.g. eorum legem vivere Langobardorum; legem viventes Romana (b) community-specific references (e.g. eorum legem vivere Langobardorum; legem viventes Romana testes); (c) references to heirs and/or executors of contracts (e.g. cum eredibus et successoribus, (X) notarius et iudex sacri palacii; (d) references to individuals (e.g. Ingoni presbiter et prepoxitus, (X) abitator in loco (Y)).
In addition to providing insights into the structure of the social community of the time, the analysis shows that the text community can be constructed because the community of practice of notaries provides texts. If the latter is the producer, the former is the product, but also the user, who recognises in the text a reference to his own actions and status. The mutual involvement of the two communities in the creation of instrumenta allowed the creation of fixed and stable textual models to refer to specific social roles and competences. While the notaries' main role is to organise property, in the