The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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preserved in Italian, such as the old or dialectal plurals mano, figo, peco, aco,
and Old Rumanian has mânŭ); we also find interchange between these
declensions and the 3rd declension in the case of neuters such as OS ‘bone’,
VAS ‘vessel’, PECU/PECUS ‘cattle’, TERGUM/TERGUS ‘back’, IUGERUM ‘acre’.
Amidst all this confusion, only one type of neuter noun stood firm as a distinct
formation, and that was the type CORPUS, TEMPUS, PECTUS, with plurals
CORPORA, TEMPORA, PECTORA; this has particular significance for Romance
because we shall find that this -ORA segment enjoyed a notable extension as a
plural ending in certain areas, as already mentioned above. (Note that with the
collapse of the case system nouns of the TEMPUS type were left with a single
form for the singular based on the Latin form ending in -US, which made the
-ORA of the plural appear to be a plural ending rather than a combination of
stem and ending, as it originally was. For this development, compare the -er of
German Kind-er, Ei-er, Engl. dial. child-er.) Before we proceed further, let me
emphasize again that these tendencies to change were already evinced in the
early stages of Latin and continued to follow the same pattern throughout the
history of the language.
b) Examples of neuter plurals which can be thought of collectively are
OSSA ‘bones’, VASA ‘vessels (pots and pans, dishes)’, coming to mean ‘the
baggage of an army’, LIGNA ‘firewood’, VISCERA ‘entrails’, ‘internal organs’,
MILIA ‘thousands’, and of plurals forming pairs BRACHIA ‘arms’, CUBITA
‘elbows’, CORNUA ‘horns’, GENUA ‘knees’, LABRA ‘lips’, CILIA ‘eyelids’. In
other cases, words are only used in the plural, with a collective meaning, as in
the case of ARMA ‘arms’, HIBERNA ‘winter quarters’ MOENIA ‘town walls’,
BACCHANALIA ‘festival of Bacchus’ (so also nouns like SATURNALIA,
VESTALIA, and SPONSALIA ‘betrothal’), or have a different meaning in the
plural from the singular, such as CASTRA ‘camp’ (CASTRUM ‘fort’), AUXILIA