The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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Another popular development which had been taking place all this time
and which is significant for Romance is exhibited in the Defixionum Tabellae,
cursing tablets, which are found dating from the 1st century B.C. onwards, and
by the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. begin to contain forms of interest from the
Romance point of view. Here we find, besides 2nd-declension pl. MANOS for
MANUS and neuter pl. CAPILLA (as in Plautus), the entirely new “double plurals”
BRACIAS ‘arms’, LABRAS ‘lips’, with INTESTINAS ‘intestines’ (also used by
Petronius), and perhaps ILIAE ‘flanks’ (the actual reading given in Audollent’s
edition is ILAE), as well as LABIAS and NERVIAS as in pre-classical texts. They
also contain pre-classical COLLUS, and MENTUS ‘chin’ and FEMUS ‘thigh’ (a
back-formation from: FEMORIS). The interesting thing about BRACIAS, LABRAS,
INTESTINAS, ILIAE, and probably also NERVIAS, is that there was no singular in
-A (the dictionaries list only the pl. forms NERVIA, NERVIAE, without any
singular); so we can imagine the sings. BRACHIUM, LABRUM, being matched by
the pls. BRACHIAE, LABRAE, like BALNEUM, BALNEAE. This use of a “double
plural” corresponds to the situation found at present in Rumanian and some
Italian dialects, and is also the forerunner of the development seen in late Latin,
where the neuter plurals are treated as feminine plurals as regards adjectival
concord. It is also easy to see how a plural like LABRAS could give rise to a new
singular *LABRA, the ancestor of Fr. lèvre. So we are now at the stage where we
can begin to see some sort of a pattern emerging.
b) We come now to the period of the popular Latin of inscriptions and
the “low” Latin of later writers, the kind of Latin whose deviations from the
classical norm are an indication of what was happening in the language in the
centuries before the emergence of texts written in the Romance vernaculars. At
this stage the phenomena we have already observed begin to assume the form
of a definite pattern of development. Though the works I have scanned do not