The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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c) The only other word common to standard Rumanian and the other
languages is late Latin MINUTALIA, which also appears in the form *MINUTIALIA;
here we have Rum. măruntaie ‘entrails’, It. minutaglia, minuzzaglia ‘trifles’, Fr.
menuaille, menuisaille ‘ditto’, Prov. menudaio, menusaio, Cat. menudalla (and
old menudall, menussall), Arag. menudallas (which García de Diego glosses as
‘menudajas’, a form I have not found elsewhere), Ptg. miuçalhas (in this sense
Sardinian has the words pispisadza, pispisalla and pimpirinalla; HWS, §46).
The only other Rumanian formations given by Meyer-Lübke (Schicks.) are
răpaie and fluăraie, which I have not been able to trace in other sources, but
there is one more word, given by Corominas in the DCELC as being used in the
Banat, which is derived from ANIMALIA, a form that has a widespread progeny,
rivalling ANIMAL(E) as a term for a single beast. Here the Banat form is nămaie
‘small horned animal’, ‘sheep’, ‘head of cattle’, showing a purely popular
development. But elsewhere the formations are sometimes popular, sometimes
only semi-popular. Italian has old animaglia/animalia, Sic. armalia (and armali
from the singular, like Veril. alimali) ‘animal’, and Lucan. armagnə ‘wild
animal’ (in many dialects ‘animal’ means ‘pig’). Friulian has magne ‘snake’ (if
this is connected) beside nemal ‘ox’ from the singular, where Tyrolean has
created a new fem. animala ‘cow’. Lower Engadinian has limargia ‘pig’; apart
from this, new singulars have been created by cutting off the -a, so LEng. limari,
UEng. al(i)meri ‘pig’, ‘beast’, and Surs. glimari ‘beast’ beside armal < ANIMAL
‘head of cattle’ (cf. also Val. Antr. rimari, Val Ses. arümaj, given by R.R. Posner
in Consonantal Dissimilation in the Romance Languages, Oxford, 1961).
Besides these, it seems that we should possibly include here a group of
Rhaeto-Romance words referred to MOBILIA in the REW, but containing the
stem vowel -a-; these are Surs., Eng. muaglia ‘cattle’, for which Upper
Engadinian has created a new sing. muagl for ‘a head of cattle’, though
elsewhere muvel is the form used, pointing clearly to MOBILE and suggesting
that perhaps muaglia has arisen out of a fusion of MOBILIA and ANIMALIA (but
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