The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

67
67
mil and modern mille (masc.). As a borrowing from Latin, MILIA appears as a
numeral in Old Italian and Provençal in the forms we have just looked at above,
trea milia, tria milia, and Calabrian still uses duimilia, trimilia; for ‘thousands’
modern Italian uses a new pl. mila, developed from mille, joined with another
numeral in a combined form as in diecimila, while modern Occitanian has a
similar milo for both ‘thousand(s)’ (along with mil(e), mili) and ‘mile’.
Elsewhere, MILIA ‘thousands’ appears in Old French as milie or mile, in forms
like chinc milie, di mile, but also with added -s as in XIII miles, though the
modern language only uses the plain mille (which has fallen in with mil <
MILLE as a positional variant) in such combinations; the development of mile,
mille from milie is comparable to that of huile from OFr. olie. MILIA
‘thousands’ can also be found in Old Spanish and quite frequently in Old
Catalan in the form milia, but this has now been replaced by the uninflected mil
in both languages. It seems also, from the use of the neuter dua, as if learned
MILIA rather than MILLE may underlie Eng. duamilli, Surs. duamelli (a
comparable -i for -IU is commonly found in learned words, e.g. prezi, vezi,
palazi, dicziunari, vocabulari).
From the numerals it is but a short step to the pronominal adjectives.
The prime case is OMNIA ‘all’, which, as we saw at the end of §4, was used not
only as a feminine singular ( “omnia stratura sua”) in late Latin, but even as an
invariable adjective (“vestimento meo omnia”) and a singular (or plural?)
pronoun (“traditis ei clericis et omnia” and “omnia que audivi a patre meo
notum feci vobis”, Vää., §347). This word has had a continued existence in
certain areas in the sense of ‘every’. Rohlfs (§500) quotes ogna sasone, ogna di,
ogna potestate from Old Lombard, showing that the word was not limited to the
feminine gender, and also an old ogna strame from N.W. Tuscany; other