The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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SCat. endivia, Sp. endibia, Ptg. endivia/endiva. A contrary development
affecting dialectal Tuscan and Rhaeto-Romance has given Tusc. erbo for erba
‘herb’ and Eng. erv/erb ‘blade of grass’ from erva/erba ‘grass’ (in another
connection, which we will look at in a moment, Meyer-Lübke suggests a cross
between HERBA and ERVUM/ERVUS (attested in Ven. Fort.)), and in the same way
Spanish has created escobo ‘brushwood’ from escoba ‘plant from which brooms
are made’ (Lat. SCOPA). Similary in Rhaeto-Romance we find Eng. fev, Surs. fav
‘bean’ formed from feva, fava (Lat. FABA), which now have the collective
meaning of ‘legumes’, like the Calab. fava. The existence in Latin of the
multiple forms SPICUS/SPICUM (pl. SPICA)/SPICA ‘ear of corn’, ‘spike’ led to
much confusion in Romance (as did also the existence of SPINA ‘thorn’ beside
SPINUS ‘thornbush’), so that we find Rum. spic, pl. spice, ‘ear of corn’, spică
(collective) ‘ears’, It. spigo/spiga (the northern type of formation, alongside
spico/spica with specialized meanings; Rohlfs, §384, not realizing that spigo
goes back to Latin, tries to explain it as a new formation based apparently on
taking spiga to be a plural form, cf. midolla, orecchia), Friul. spic, Eng.
spih/spia, Surs. spitg/spigia, Fr. épi, Prov., Cat. espic/espiga, Sp., Ptg. espiga,
Log. ispiga, Camp. spigu/spiga. Finally, as we are talking about plants, we may
include late Latin HORTA ‘gardens’, which has given Prov. orta, Cat. horta, Sp.
huerta, Ptg. horta ‘kitchen-garden’, ‘market-garden’ (all bigger than ort, hort,
huerto, hôrto ‘garden’, cf. Rh. üert); here, as plurals for the It. orto, we find
Cors. orte, SIt. ortora, ortore, and Lombard Latin ortoras. All these names of
plants show us that it was easy for the collective plurals to be apprehended as
singulars when they refer to items that are not usually thought of individually.
10. The -ORA plurals.
a) As in the case of ortora just now, I have from time to time quoted
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