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This paper introduces a more complex and refined articulated view than the classic and simple dichotomy of linguistic production. According to the traditional doxa, what is linguistically articulated is either spoken or written. Forms of written language have previously been considered a secondary representation of spoken forms and, at least in the alphabetic system, the only properly linguistic form. I argue that there exists a third dimension of language, which is internal. This internal form is lexically, phonetically and grammatically articulated, without being spoken in a proper sense, but which can be seen as the pre-condition for both spoken and written production. In other words, linguistic production does not necessarily imply the presence of two interacting speakers (or writers/readers). Production can be seen as the simple effect of an internal activity, and can be described without reduction to spoken or written forms. A consideration of this third dimension in a systematic way could enrich and strengthen approaches to many types of texts and help to productively integrate the traditional schemes adopted in Sociolinguistics, Historical Linguistics, Philology, Literary Criticism, and Pragmatics.

This essay offers an overview of vernacular textual cultures in Padova during the reign of the Carrarese family (1318–1405), especially during the second half of the fourteenth century, a period when diverse types of vernacular texts—literary, legal and commercial—emerge from official and semi-official cultural mechanisms of production, from the court and the chancery to scientific studies. This rapidly diversified production in the vernacular is so abundant that it allows us to study closely not only the development of old Paduan dialect but also its noteworthy variety of linguistic registers which utilize essentially two incumbant models: written Latin and a Tuscan-based literary vernacular. These rich textual resources offer us key data in reconstructing both the linguistic and cultural histories of this important northern Italian center of textual production.

The article focuses on some areas of intersection of Romance philology and medieval epigraphy: these two disciplines naturally interact in the field of the medieval epigraphic production written in neo latin languages, i.e. a sort of texts that is – for some reasons – an exception for both of them. On the one side, medieval epigraphy is a relatively young discipline, mainly devoted to documents written in Latin (they are indeed the large majority of its research topics); on the other side, Romance philology is a discipline born and raised on the study of texts mainly drafted in parchment and paper. Thus, these disciplines must integrate and adapt their respective methodology when they turn to a sort of production which is generally unusual for both of them. A methodological reflection is integrated, in this article, by the edition (or critical re-edition) of some epigraphic texts from Italy, France and Portugal.