The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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from a late Greek form kólphos, masc. or neut. PUTE-US/-UM, VAD-US/-UM, and
the 4th-decl. mascs. ARCUS, FETUS, FRUCTUS, GRADUS, all with early
2nd-declension forms. If we add the further words I quoted in §4e as having
parallel forms in Rumanian and Lombard Latin, we have 2nd-decl. mascs.
CAMPUS, LOCUS (which also had a neut. pl. LOCA), RAMUS (with late pl. RAMA),
VENTUS, 2nd-decl. neut. PAVIMENTUM, and 4th-decl. mascs. CURSUS, LACUS.
What are we to make of this? For a start, there is one group which I alluded to
earlier in §3. This consists of the 4th-declension masculine deverbal nouns in
-TUS, -SUS, such as ACTUS, VISUS, which came to be paralleled by forms derived
from the nominal use of the neuter of the past participle, as ACTUM, VISUM; this
also led to other new formations such as FRUCTUM, GUSTUM, PASSUM (cf.
“passa” for ‘fords’ quoted by Du Cange, s.v. passum), and to the appearance of
forms like PRATUS, FURTUS, FATUS, no doubt intended to be corrections of
supposedly mistaken neuter forms (note the parallel with LECTUS (2 and 4) and
late LECTUM). We thus have a situation where there was widespread fluctuation
between masculine 4th-declension forms and neuter 2nd-declension forms, and
later evidence shows that this development affected all the 4th-declension
masculines (including those that showed 4th-declension forms at one stage or
another), giving forms like the ARCORA, CIBORA, GRADORA, LACORA quoted
before, and Lomb. Lat. lectora, portora, pratora, Rum. gusturi, porturi, sânuri,
visuri, also geruri, cornuri (beside coarne) from the neuters GELU, CORNU;
further, as a later development perhaps, Istro-Rum. acur (Schicks., p. 53), It.
dial. acora/agora (beside which Rohlfs, §370, quotes a Latin ACURA), ficora
from the feminines ACUS, FICUS (which also were used as masculines, with a
neuter FICUM also appearing; cf. also the development of PECUS), and even dial.
(Salent.) manure from MANUS, which has no history of masculinity.
g) Having established the point that these nouns became neuters, the
next question we face is why they should have adopted the -ORA rather than the