The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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3rd-declension neuters: Lomb. Lat., SIt. capora, SIt. capure, Rum. capuri
(beside It. capita, Rum. capete), where the declension of late Latin CAPUS ‘head’
is uncertain but could possibly represent this type, OIt. nomora, where ORum.
has numere < NOMINA ‘names’ (Densunianu, Histoire de la Langue Roumaine,
Vol. 2, §53), perhaps by dissimilation, and OIt. lumora, where Campidanian
preserves LUMINA ‘lights’ as a singular in the phrase a una lumina ‘one-eyed’.
(Similarly EXAMINA ‘swarms’ is preserved as a singular in Calab. sámina, Surs.
schaumna.) Other -uri forms in Rumanian are arămuri ‘copperware’ for
AERAMINA (also alămuri ‘brassware’), legumuri ‘vegetables’ for LEGUMINA, and
Ńărmuri ‘banks’, ‘borders’ for TERMINA ‘boundaries’, with the derivative
Ńărmurean ‘borderer’ and a new sing. Ńărmure alongside Ńărm. As we have
already seen in §4c, stems in -IN-, like TERMIN-, also tended to develop forms in
-IT-, thus from *TERMIT- have come the mascs. Neap. tirmete, Friul. tiarmit, Fr.
tertre, and we may perhaps see a late neuter form in -IT-, *GURGITA ‘whirlpools’,
leading to a *GURGURA, which seems to have underlain the Lombard Latin
gurguras, if this corresponds to standard It. gorgo, pl. gorghi.
d) At this point let us just take a brief look also at the outcome of -ORA,
or forms containing -OR-, elsewhere. TEMPORA, with an added pluralizing -S,
has been preserved in church use for ‘ember days’ in Rhaeto-Romance (Surs.
quatertempras, but Eng. has quatember from German), Provençal, Catalan,
Spanish, Portuguese and Sardinian; in Old French the extended stem appears
only in the adv. tempre(s) ‘early’ from TEMPORE. The stem CORPOR- has left no
popular reflexes, though the classical stem has been used for creating popular
forms such as Fr. corporu, Prov. courpourut. PECTORA/PECTORE are seen in the
Prov. masc. pitro/pitre, fem. pitro ‘breast’ (Mist., Vää.), and probably also in
Sard. pettórra, pettúrra ‘breast’; the stem also occurs in derivatives such as Fr.
poitrine, Prov. peitrina, Cat. pitral, Sp. petral > pretal, Ptg. peitoral, apêrto,
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