The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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in Chir.) as ‘leaves’? The modern languages offer examples of both meanings in
the singular, of which ‘foliage’ (found, e.g., in phrases corresponding to the
similar English ‘in leaf’) must surely be the older. In other cases the process of
transference is clear. In that of an abstract noun like GAUDIA, the collective
plural meaning, as in “the joys of motherhood” (as contrasted with the
individual “Five Joys of the Virgin”), is close to that of the singular, and in the
same way the pl. FORTIA ‘mighty deeds’ easily becomes the sing. FORTIA ‘might’,
‘force’, and for the development of SPONSALIA compare English “nuptials” =
“wedding”. In other cases we know that the singular use to indicate a single
object developed early, as in the case of LABIA, RETIA, TRIBULA, OPERA (but in
the abstract, not the concrete, sense). In the case of LIGNA, PRATA, CLAUSTRA,
CINDRA, CINISSA, INGUINA, BISATIA, GESTA, CAMPANIA we can clearly see a
collective use, and perhaps so also in PRIMA VERA, as ‘the first days of spring’.
Souter says SARMENTA means ‘twig’, but does not say whether it appears in the
singular. He quotes FATAE, but this may simply be extrapolated from the
FATABUS seen above, in which case we may merely have an example of a neuter
plural having a feminine oblique case (like OVARUM, OSSARIJM, CULTELLARUM),
though the -ABUS certainly seems to mark the word as feminine, being used in
classical Latin to distinguish the dat.-abl. of DEAE, FILIAE, ANIMAE from those of
DEI, FILII, ANIMI. The phrases quoted by Nyrop show that ARMA had both a
collective and an individual meaning. It is not stated how MELA, PERSICA, PIRA,
PRUNA, NESPILA and FRAGA are used, but the “pome mire pulchritudinis”
glossing “mala granata” in the Gl. Reich. are clearly individual fruits in the
plural, like Fr. pommes (the scribe might well have written “*pomas” for the
nominative, like “litteras” in another gloss). (It must be borne in mind that while
many of these examples are relevant to the whole of Romance, eg. FOLIA, ARMA,
PRIMA VERA, RETIA, some, like LIGNA, PRATA, GAUDIA, GESTA, only apply to part
of the territory, or even just to one local area, viz. France, and such examples are
only recorded in late locally-coloured texts.) In the case of the new singular