The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

word in the other languages.
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m) After this rather discursive treatment, it may be necessary once more
to remind ourselves of the relation between the modern forms in the various
languages and the Latin neuter plural forms. We have found, exceptionally, that
Rumanian keeps the mixed declension only in the case of măr/mere, that Italian
employs the same pattern only in limited cases (including those of melo and
pomo) in the old language and in dialect, and that Rhaeto-Romance is similarly
limited in its use of the collective singular, with a wide-ranging use of the old
neuter plural as a feminine singular denoting the individual fruit; in the other
areas, not unexpectedly, we find the old neuter plurals used as unitary feminine
singulars, but at the same time there are a number of masculine names of fruits.
In the case of Rumanian we can point to the fact of the use of the -A forms as
feminine singulars already in late Latin, coupled with the need to preserve a
distinction between tree and fruit, as contributory causes to the use of the -A
form to denote the fruit, and the same points apply to Italian too. In the case of
the other languages, as also in Italian, we find that the masculine names of the
fruits are basically limited to the reflexes of MELU, POMU, and combinations of
these with COTONEU (originally CYDONIU), PERSICU, GRAN(AT)U and the like,
and also PIRU and, to some extent, (*A)PRUNU and FICU. It seems to me
conceivable that this difference of treatment has some relation to the size of the
fruit, an apple or pear being more of an individual fruit than a cherry or
strawberry, so that in the latter case the plural forms in -A would be the ones
normally in use and eventually become the lexical forms (it is interesting that,
by an opposite process, the Engl. cherries, which was originally a singular
form, came, like peas(e), to be regarded as a plural; the fact that they both
ended in -s was the decisive factor, but no doubt the semantic association also
played a part). I would say also that the popularization of the -A forms was
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