The Latin Neuter Plurals in Romance - Page ON

93
93
assisted by the feminine nouns whose reflexes I have quoted in each case —
ABELLANA, AMYGDALA, CASTANEA (each originally qualifying NUX) and OLIVA.
n) While we are on the subject of trees, we may also consider the words
referring to plantations of trees, which have a natural collective feeling. In this
connection, before coming to the pan-Romance development we should note in
passing a special Rhaeto-Romance phenomenon. In this area the Latin ROBORA
survived as a collective singular, Surs. ruvra, denoting a forest of oak-trees
(Laus., §648), beside ruver for a single tree, and this led to the formation of
similar collectives from other tree-names, especially in Sursilvan. So we have
such forms as faua from fau ‘beech’, collera from coller ‘hazel’ (cf. Eng.
placename Coldra), badugna from badugn ‘birch’ (and Eng. baduogna from
baduogn), Fraisna from fraissen ‘ash’, pumera from pumer ‘apple-tree’, and
tieua from tieu ‘pine’, ‘fir’, where Lower Engadinian has tieula ‘candlewood’
(cf. Sp. tea < TAEDA) beside tieu ‘pine’, and so also UEng. teja, tev. This
development has also affected the word for a ‘wood’, which in Sursilvan is
bostga, beside the original bostg, and in Engadinian bos-cha; as a result the
Eng. bös-ch has now come to denote a single ‘tree’ (here Sursilvan uses plonta
< PLANTA). (As my sources of information are limited, it is possible that this
formation is more widely found than I have been able to ascertain.)
The Romance forms in general go back to Latin ones derived from the
names of trees by adding the suffix -ETUM, pl. -ETA. The plural form originally
referred to discrete plantations, but, like the English woods, no doubt came to
refer to a large indefinite tract covered with trees, and so could easily become a
singular, as we have seen happen in the case of the place name CODETA, and
later OLIVETA(S); so it is that we find that in the Romance langages both -ETUM