The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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matching these also ulivo/uliva. There is in addition one unique formation; the
Lat. UVA for a single ‘grape’ has become a collective sing. uva ‘grapes’. Note
also that in some dialects -ARIUS, -ARIA are used for the tree, as is the case
elsewhere.
e) When we come to Rhaeto-Romance we shall not be surprised to find
that it has preserved an earlier state of affairs as far as the names of certain of
the fruits are concerned. Here the names of the trees are formed with the -ARIU
suffix, as Surs. pumer, pirer, maler, Eng. pomer, pairer, mailer, and the old
neuter singular form, now become a masculine, is retained as the name of the
individual fruit, as in Old Italian and certain present-day Italian dialects; the old
neuter plural, as we have observed before in Rhaeto-Romance, has become a
collective singular referring to the fruit in the mass, while a new masculine
plural in -s has been created for reference to a number of individual fruits. So
we have Surs. pum/puma, LEng. pom/poma for ‘fruit’ (and ‘knob’, ‘pommel’),
while UEng. pom/pomma, in addition to having these meanings, also has the
specific meaning of ‘apple(s)’, corresponding to Surs. meil/meila and LEng.
mail/maila, and for collective ‘fruit’ this dialect has pomaraida. For other kinds
of fruit we have Surs. pér/péra, Eng. pair/paira ‘pear(s)’, Surs. prem/prema
‘plum(s)’, meil-granat, meila granata ‘pomegranate(s)’ (it is not clear whether
pum-granat, and Eng. pom-granat (old pom granó, puom granâ), mail granat
follow the same pattern). But in other cases, perhaps because the fruit was
always thought of in the mass, we find the masculine form has disappeared and
the -a form is used for the individual fruit, as elsewhere, so that we have UEng.
prünna/brünna ‘plum’, LEng. brümbla ‘plum’, ‘sloe’, Surs. tscherescha, Eng.
tschirescha ‘cherry’, Surs. mura, Eng. mu(o)ra (and LEng. amura) ‘blackberry’,
Surs. curnella ‘cornel·cherry’ (with curnel for the tree), Surs. nespla ‘medlar’,
Eng. freia ‘strawberry’ (cf. Val. Ses. fraiga), and, formed on the same model,
Surs. amarella, marena ‘morello cherry’, Surs. pumaranza, Eng. pomaranza