The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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form for ‘louse’, with masculine gender.
15. Associated developments.
a) This brings me to the end of the words I have collected that go back
to Latin neuter plural forms, and it only remains for me now to note certain
other associated developments. The first is the predilection of Rhaeto-Romance
for “collective singulars”, words with a feminine singular form but a plural
meaning, forming a kind of collective plural for cognate masculine nouns with
a unitary meaning, like the bratscha ‘arms’, detta/dainta ‘fingers’ (correspond-
ing to bratsch, det/daint) that we have already looked at. We have already paid
due attention to certain group words like ladramenta/ledramainta,
cauramenta/chavramainta, racaglia, pastriglia, mattanaglia/mattaniglia, with
the -MENTA, -ALIA, -ILIA endings. Others are words for ‘rocks’, Surs. greppa,
greppaglia, Eng. grippa, cripla, spelma, crappa, while for ‘peaks’ Sursilvan
has pezza where Engadinian has pizza. Meyer-Lübke (Gramm.) quotes a certain
number of examples from Sursilvan, some of which we have already examined,
while others turn out on inspection to be merely examples of parallel masculine
and feminine forms, though Surs. fela, Eng. feila beside fel, feil ‘gall’, Lat.
FEL-LA, surely involves an old plural, as does Surs. frusta ‘pieces’ beside frust,
Eng. fruost < FRUSTUM ‘piece’ (and cf. It. frusto ‘piece’, frusta ‘baguette’).
Others of interest here are the collectives brutga, bruia beside Surs. brutg, Eng.
bruoch, bruoi ‘heather’, cotgla, cotla beside Surs. cotgel, Eng. chottel ‘coal’,
dascha beside dasch ‘fir twig’, farcaglia beside farcagl ‘hemp stalk’, filappa
beside filap ‘linen thread’. Other examples from Engadinian, provided by
Velleman, are rüzcha, rüzchaglia ‘odds and ends’ (no masc. sing.), marocca
‘discarded things’ (no masc. sing.), zuondra ‘woodland’ beside zuonder ‘Swiss
mountain pine’, where Surs. zundra has the latter meaning. There are also some
cases where the collective noun, while still being used in its collective sense,
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