Classification of Everyday Life Lexicon in Costa Rican Inventories of Goods From the 18th Century

Abstract

This article stablishes a classification of the vocabulary present in colonial documents written in Costa Rica during the eighteenth century. The texts are inventories of goods found in larger documents from the colonial era, like testaments which belonged to common people, and thus display everyday vocabulary. In total, seventeen unedited inventories of goods were chosen and transcribed according to CHARTA’s criteria. From these texts, the relevant lexicon was extracted and then classified in onomasiological categories. The results show that most used words belong to the categories of tools, clothing, and textiles, which has to do with the rural way of life but also with the economic changes that occurred during the eighteenth century, when the so-called «land goods» became predominant in Costa Rica. Moreover, the qualitative analysis offers new data based on unedited documentation oriented towards a better understanding of Costa Rican Spanish across time.