The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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‘orange’, Surs. parmuglia (per-) ‘sloe’, Eng. parmuoglia ‘juniper berry’, Eng.
vaixla ‘sour cherry’, together with Surs. castogna, Eng. chastagna ‘chestnut’.
On the other hand we find some masculine fruits which seem to have no
collective forms: Surs., Eng. persic ‘peach’, Surs. cudugn ‘quince’ (cf. masc.
Pied. codogn/cugn). In this connection we may note that Sursilvan has mandel
for ‘almond’ and mandla for ‘tonsil’, while Engadinian has mandla for both
meanings, and Sursilvan has apricosa ‘apricot’ corresponding to Eng.
abricos/albicoc. Note also Eng. nuschè ‘pine-seed’ with the corresponding
nuschella used for ‘ankle’, where the cognate It. nocella means ‘walnut’ or
‘lower head of the ulna’. By a contrary development we find that Eng. ü(j)a
‘grapes’ (Surs. iua ‘grape’ or ‘grapes’) from the Latin singular form UVA (cf.
Italian above) has developed a new form üj for a single ‘grape’. I have been able
to turn up very little information about the situation in Friulian; pome means
collective ‘fruit’, and mel, per, more seem to correspond to Surs. meil, pér,
mura, while the REW also gives as Friulian forms bruñul, brómbula and
cjástina, ulive. In general it seems clear that in this dialect the old neuter plurals
have simply become unitary singulars.
f) French generally follows the Italian pattern as far as the names of the
fruits are concerned, while using -ARIU to form the names of the trees. However,
the use of the neuter/masculine has survived in some cases. The first of these
concerns POMU, which gives OFr. pom ‘pommel’ like the It. pomo (modern
French uses pommeau), while the plural POMA has given pomme ‘apple’ and
other derived senses, see Provençal below; we shall find that this survival of the
old singular in a transferred sense is typical of W. Romance. MELU/MELA as
such left no reflex in French (the Middle French mel(l)e is from Provençal);
however, we do find the older migraine ‘pomegranate’, which seems to be from
*MELU GRANA contaminated by MILLE. Most other fruits show the -A form:
poire, prune, mûre (OFr. meure), pêche, cerise, sorbe (with the synonymous
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