The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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languages the first consonant appears as a g, and here, in Sursilvan at least, there
might be crossing with GARRITUS, cf. grir < GARRIRE. Italian has grida (and SIt.
gride) as a collective plural, as opposed to gridi for individual utterances, and
similar forms are found for other words for ‘cries’, strida, stridi, and urla, urli,
while Rumanian has the similarly formed strigăte, Ńipete for ‘cries’. Elsewhere
we only find collective singulars, as Surs. grida, Eng. crida, Cat. crida, Sp., Ptg.
grita; there are other similar forms, like OFr. crie, Prov. crida, meaning a
‘proclamation’, but these are deverbals corresponding to the It. sing. grida. We
also find a correspondence between Rum. pl. fremete ‘rustlings’ and the
singulars OFr. friente and Sard. fremida ‘roar’, and a similar agreement in the
kind of participial formation used is seen in Log. náskida, Camp. nášida and It.
nascita. These last can hardly be plural forms in origin, but Bitti imbórvita, Log.
imbórbida ‘offerings wrapped in cloths’, from *INVOLVITA would certainly seem
to be, as do Log. prémidas ‘dysentery’ from *PREMITA and Log. (g)émida
‘groan’ from GEMITA.
h) Other forms that we have looked at already are OIt. pərtosərə
(pertosa is also found), reposora, passa, Rum. pasuri, as well as the numerous
other Rumanian formations, old and new, quoted in §4e and §10g, such as
visuri, drepturi, vânaturi, dusuri, scrisuri (note that among them we find plurals
like cursuri ‘flows’, ‘courses’, răspunsuri ‘answers’ corresponding to feminine
singulars elsewhere). It will be recalled that some of the Rumanian -uri forms
were paralleled by Lombard Latin forms, some of which echo the late Latin
forms given above: praeceptora, censora, accessora, scriptora, ingressora (e-,
re-)/-uras, mansoras, traversoras (perhaps partly negating what I said above
with regard to TRANSVERSA), cursoras, mercatora, and tectora anticipating the
tettora above. There are also Rumanian plurals in -e, like the new formations
acte, subiecte, procese I quoted in §5c, and other words denoting sounds,
similar to the proparoxytonic fremete, strigăte above, such as sunete ‘sounds’,