The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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note that -egl- > -agl- is a regular phonetic change in Engadinian, cf. arvaglia <
ERVILIA in §9w above). Old French has almaille/aumaille ‘animals’, ‘cattle’
(once as a plural with a numeral, “cent almaille”, later also with an -s, as “XL
aumailles”); the form armaille (Franco-Provençal?) is still used in Switzerland.
Provençal has almalha/armalha, now aumaio, armalho and other forms, besides
EProv. arimau < ANIMAL (Posner, op. cit.), while in Old Catalan we find
animalia and alimanya. Similarly Old Spanish has animalia/
animalla/alimania/alimaria, with alimaña still in use for ‘an animal which
destroys the game’; there is also an Alavés almaje, which Corominas says
suggests an earlier *almaja. Old Portuguese has animalia/alimalia, while the
modern language has alimária ‘dumb animal’ and almalha or Minh. armalha
‘heifer’, from which have been formed almalho, armalho (Gal. -llo) ‘young
bull’.
d) I spoke just now of the expected occurrence of -aja in Castilian, and
there are a certain number of words found over a wide area in which this is the
case. First we have late Latin MEDALIA ‘half-denarii’, ‘half-coins’, apparently
for MEDIALIA ‘halves’, which came to mean ‘a half-denarius coin’, so It., Rh.
medaglia, OFr. meaille, now maille, Prov. me(z)alha, Cat. mealla, Moz.
medalya, Arag. mealla/mialla, Sp. meaja/miaja, Ptg. mealha, OLog. metagia
(evidently with interference from METALLEA; the regularly formed Log. meadza,
rustic Camp. mialla are measures of capacity); the Italian word was borrowed
everywhere in the sense of ‘medal’, so even Rum. medalie. Another word is
*SONALIA ‘bell’ (not *SONACULA, as shown by the Sardinian forms), which
has given It. sonaglio (a new singular; cf. sonaglia in Du Cange) and similar
Eng. sunagl, Fr. sonnaille, Prov. sonalha (and sonalh), Cat. sonalla, Sp. sonaja,
Ptg. soalha, Sard. (Log.) sonadza, (Camp.) sonalla. Parallel to this is MORTALIA
‘grave clothes’, giving (with the meanings varying from language to language)
UEng., Surs. murtaglia, OFr. mortaille, Prov. mortalha, Cat. mortalla, Sp.