The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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the trees were neuter, with -UM in the singular and -A in the plural. But then, as
Lausberg explains in detail (§601), the trees generally became masculine, as did
ARBOR also, while at the same time the formal distinction in the singular
between masculine and neuter was becoming lost, so that the names of the tree
and the fruit became the same in the singular; in the plural the distinction
between masculine -I and neuter -A was maintained, but there was a further
tendency to change the name of the tree to a form in -A, in keeping with its
feminine gender (so ORNA for ORNUS in an inscription), and to use the neuter
plural of the name of the fruit for the singular, thus creating a further kind of
confusion. (An example of the opposite tendency is seen in the creation of the
tree-name CASTANEUS, quoted by Grandgent from Gregory of Tours, to form a
contrast with CASTANEA, which had always been a feminine singular and now
became reserved for the name of the fruit.) Thus in late Latin we can find either
MELU-, POMU-, PIRU-, MESPILU- or MELA, POMA, PIRA, MESPILA as the names
both of the trees and the fruit (we have already encountered a pl. POME in the Gl.
Reich.). This confusion has been continued in Romance in certain areas, but has
been obviated in most cases by creating a new name for the tree, generally by
use of the ending -ARIUS or -ARIA (depending on the gender of the word for
‘tree’). MELU- is continued in Rumanian as măr, meaning ‘apple-tree’ or
‘apple’, with differing forms in the plural following the classical distinction,
meri for the former and mere for the latter (here Istro-Rumanian seems to have
a pl. merur, and a similar perur ‘pears’). Similarly, Old Italian had an
undifferentiated singular il melo for the tree and the fruit, but differentiated
plurals i meli and le mela, and this situation is continued today in the southern
dialects. This seems to have been the pattern followed originally by all the fruits
in Italian (cf. pomo still used for both tree and fruit), and we shall find that the
old masculine or neuter singular forms are also sporadically preserved
elsewhere in the case of certain fruits. (There were also a certain number of
fruits which never had a neuter form.)
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