Las autoridades del Gran Diccionario de la Lengua Castellana de Aniceto de Pagés.

Abstract

The Gran Diccionario de la Lengua Castellana (de Autoridades),
by Aniceto de Pagés y Puig, is one of the few dictionaries of
Spanish Language that includes examples as models of language
use. Having being published between 1902 and 1932, almost two
centuries later than the Diccionario de Autoridades (1726- 1739), the
list of authors and books selected as language authorities by Pagés
is, logically, larger and richer than the one made by the Real Academia
Española in the 18th century, since it had to be extended and
adapted to the language used in the beginning of the 20th century.
In this article we study the composition of Pagés’ canon. This study
is based not only on the list of quoted authors that was included in
the first edition of volume 1, but especially on the data obtained as
a result of the analysis of the quotations located in three sections of
this dictionary.
Our aim is to show how the canon that Pagés propose as a linguistic
model of Spanish is composed and to check whether tradition and
modernity are balanced or not within it. Consequently, we illustrate
our study with tables and graphics that show the percentages
reached by the quoted authors, grouped according to the centuries
and ages that they belong to, and then, we analyze them.