The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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‘salary’, and in these the plural combination -ie has been replaced by -ii, as
salarii (with article -le).
c) A similar -ORIA formation is seen in TONSORIA, *CISORIA, which may
well be plurals, considering their use to mean ‘shears’, ‘scissors’; here we have
It. cesoia, cesoie (and old cisoie) ‘shears’, Pavia tezoira (with vowel
dissimilation), Romagn. tuzura (and cf. the old verb tosorare), Friul. sizore, OFr.
cisoires, Upper Maine tousoires, Prov. tosoira and tesoiras with dissimilation,
cisoiras, OCat. tosoras, tesores, now tisores, and cisores, Sp. tijeras (with -er- <
-uer- < -oir-), Gal. tosoira, Ptg. tesoira, tesoura (and old tisoura; cf. also Gal.
cezoiro, Ptg. cisoiro ‘strap’, given by Wartburg); related forms are Rum.
tunsoare ‘shearing’ (re-formed on tunde) and Log. tusordzu ‘shearing place and
time’. For *COOPERTORIA, if this belongs here, we have It. copertoia, Sp.
cobertera, Ptg. cobertoura ‘lid’, all flanked by other forms in -o, but this may
be a case of a later formation of masculine and feminine pairs, which we shall
look at in due course. In general the -ORIA forms are as difficult to classify as
the -ARIA ones, though Meyer-Lübke (Schicks.) lists all the present-day
feminine forms as if they had come from neuters. As in the case of -ARIU > -ar,
Rumanian has mixed-declension nouns in -or < -ORIU (this -ORIU also replaced
-ORE in masculine agent nouns, just as -ARIU replaced -ARE), with the result that
we find -oare as the corresponding plural form representing the plural -ORIA,
just as it represents the feminine singular -ORIA in other cases. Examples of
such plurals are cuptoare ‘ovens’ (< *COCTORIA), ajutoare ‘aid’, dormitoare
‘bedrooms’, and many neologisms like motoare, generatoare, transformatoare,
acumulatoare, condensatoare, carburatoare and so on; there are also new
mixed-declension forms in -oriu, with pl. -orii, like those in -ariu, -arii, as
auditoriu, abatoriu ‘abattoir’, consistoriu, refectoriu, repertoriu, territoriu. In
the Romance languages in general, the form resulting from -ORIU (and
sometimes -ORE) is used to make nouns denoting a place where something is