The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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üj ‘grape’. Similarly ERVILIA (see 9w) has given Surs. arveglia, Eng. arvaglia
‘peas’, and from these have been formed arvegl, arvagl ‘pea’. In the same way
FAVA ‘bean’ (see 9x) has become Surs. fava, Eng. feva ‘legumes’, and the new
words for ‘bean’ are fav, fev, while Calab. fava is also a collective). Besides
these we noted the Tuscan erbo for erba ‘herb’ and Eng. erv/erb ‘blade of
grass’ from erva/erba ‘grass’ (note too that It. erba and Eng. erva/erba, like the
other reflexes of HERBA, can have both the collective meaning of ‘grass’ and
the unitary meaning of ‘herb’, ‘small flowering plant’ — cf. the reflexes of
MONETA meaning ‘money’ or ‘a coin’ — so that in this case we see a
differentiated development of a word into collective and unitary meanings). In
Spanish a new word escobo ‘brushwood’ developed out of escoba ‘plant from
which brooms are made’ (Lat. SCOPAE ‘twigs tied together to make a broom’),
though this appears to be a different kind of development. Finally, Rum. paie
‘straw’, which has developed regularly from Lat. PALEA, has become regarded
as a plural, giving a new sing. paiu ‘a straw’. (There are a number of examples
of masculine forms replacing feminines in tree names, such as the It. tiglio
‘lime’ beside tiglia, dial. bidollo ‘birch’ beside betulla, so also Rum. teiu, Sp.
abedul, but the impulse in this case came from the change of gender from
feminine to masculine in ARBOR ‘tree’ and the trees in -US, like POPULUS
‘poplar’, FRAXINUS ‘ash’.)
In §11f we looked at FAMILIA, taken as a collective, and the development
from it of the Italian and Rhaeto-Romance unitary masculine words for a
‘servant’. A similar development is seen in Surs. biestg, Eng. bes-ch ‘a sheep’
from biestga, bes-cha, which have come from the Lat. BESTIA ‘beast’ but have
taken on the collective meaning ‘sheep (pl.)’. (The masculine forms appearing
elsewhere, such as Tusc. dial. biscio ‘snake’, Sp., Ptg. bicho ‘grub’ are pure
cases of change of gender, a change which is already found in late Lat.
BESTIUS.) Other Rhaeto-Romance forms provided by Meyer-Lübke are crest