The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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a new singular maŃ for one of the intestines. A similar form is Dante’s le
minugia ‘guts’, from late MINUTIA ‘small thing’ (for the meaning cf. Rum.
măruntaie ‘guts’ from MINUTALIA, and Sp. menudos, Ptg. miudos ‘giblets’ from
MINUTU). Besides le orecchia, Meyer-Lübke (Gramm.) also gives as new
formations le unghia ‘nails’, le mascella ‘jaws’, le nocca ‘knuckles’, le
guancia ‘cheeks’ (I have found corroboration for the first three of these in the
Grande Diz. della Ling. It.), and an earlier (unrecorded) le coscia ‘thighs’ can
also be inferred from coscio ‘leg of meat’ (see also §6j above). (In the case of
unghia we find the masc. diminutives unghiello, unghiolo, and it would be easy
for plural forms in -a to arise in the dialect areas where nouns in -a remain
unchanged in the plural. Other Italian plurals taken from singular forms in -a
are found in all areas in combination with a numeral (see §7), thus OTusc. tre
fiata, Mil. doa fiada, OBol. dua fiada, OLomb. quatro volta (so also today
standard qualche volta), Roman. tre ora, cf. Rohlfs, §643.) Just before quoting
the forms like unghia, mascella (in §6j) I gave the many forms developed from
*MEDULLU, taken from MEDULLA ‘marrow’ regarded as a plural form, which
are generally flanked by other forms coming from MEDULLA (for the details see
§6j). The standard example is It. midollo (with old pl. le midolla), and in the
section where he quotes it (§384) Rohlfs also gives, among other examples of
the same kind of development, the old candelo for candela ‘candle’, and the
translator of the Italian edition adds in a note the non-Tuscan tavolo for tavola.
Rohlfs also cites (§353) crino ‘horsehair’, ‘a single horsehair’ as an example of
an alteration of crine to characterize the gender, whereas Meyer-Lübke
(Gramm.) gives it as formed from a new pl. crina (which also appears as a
feminine singular for ‘tresses’).
c) When we came to the plant world (§9) I noted first (in 9e) that Eng.
ü(j)a ‘grapes’ from UVA (a collective, like It. uva) had given rise to a new form
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