The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

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Another masculine form is Central pessike, Log. pessige, Laconi pessiu, Camp.
pressiu ‘peach’, and this seems to have followed the gender of pumu (has Cat.
pressec also exerted some influence?). Other masculine forms have been
introduced from Italy: limone, arantsu (-dzu, -džu), baracocco (-u) or piricocco
(-u), džiddžulu (and -a) or tsintsulu (and -a). As might be expected, Sardinian
has also retained the same Latin feminines as the other languages, thus Camp.
oddana ‘hazel-nut’, Log., Camp. mendula, Log. castandza, Camp. castandža,
OSard. oliba (oliva), Log., Camp. olia (ulia). Finally, to round out my list of
languages, I note that Lausberg (§612) also quotes a Vegliot paira for the
individual ‘pear’, indicating that this is the usual type of formation in this area,
while Bec (p. 2/412) gives a suppositious *krisa as the source of the Croatian
form (here the REW has a similar kris).
l) Another fruit that has a slightly different history is the ‘fig’. The Latin
FICUS originally belonged to the 4th declension, and gradually changed to the
2nd, with the meaning of both tree and fruit as well as of the physical affliction
‘piles’; the word was generally feminine but might also sometimes be maculine,
and in late Latin (C. Aurel.) a neuter FICUM is also found for the fruit, bringing
this word into line with the others. It keeps its feminine gender in Sardinian,
both for the tree and the fruit: OLog. sa ficu, Nuor. ficu, Log., Camp. figu (sa
vigu), Sass. la vigga with adaptation to the names of the other fruits (Fless.,
§15, Laus., §662). In Tuscan, fico is masculine for both tree and fruit (and also
denotes a ‘tumour’), but in the south fico, figo, ficu are feminine in the sense of
the fruit and are invariable in the plural, this being a relic of the 4th declension
morphology. Ligurian has a masc. sing. u figu but fem. pl. e fighe, and a similar
le fica can be found in Old Italian (DCELC). From this comes a further
development to a sing. la fica for the fruit as opposed to the tree, formerly used
widely and still found in southern Italian (Rohlfs, §§389, 382; REW) and in
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