The source value of early charters of uncertain chronological status in historical linguistics and onomastics

This paper explores the problem of the source value of charters from the point of view of research in linguistic history. Charters written in Latin often contain elements of the vulgar language (in this case, Hungarian). Only four authentic Hungarian charters have survived from the 11th century in their original form. Therefore, we have also included the non-authentic and non-original charters of the 11th century in our research over the recent decades.These charters may contain 4–5 chronological layers, and so our task is to separate them. Charters of uncertain status cannot be analysed using the same methodological principles as the authentic and original charters. This paper discusses the methodological principles that may facilitate the identification of the source value of these charters for historical linguistics. Although these principles are defined based on charters from Hungary, due to their universal nature a significant portion of them may also be used successfully in other regions of medieval European charter research.