Re: Neuter girls (was Re: French)

En réponse à JS Bangs <jaspax@...>:

>
> Ahem.  Who says that none of the Romance languages has neuter gender?
> Romanian's neuter is alive and kicking, and is in fact the
> *productive*
> gender for borrowings and many neologisms.
>
Romanian is really a fascinating language! I have to look at it again, every
time I look at it I learn something new. And a Romance language with suffixed
articles can only please me :))) .

> However, not even the Romanians could abide the Latin rule of neut
> pl=fem
> sg. Instead they have neut pl=fem pl, which appears to have been the
> rule
> for the neuter class in Proto-Romanance.  I believe that French and
> Italian also preserve a few nouns that are "masculine in the singular
> and
> feminine in the plural," which is the rule for all neuter nouns in
> Romanian.
>
Indeed. The most well-known nouns who behave like that are "amour"
and "délice". There are supposed to be others, but they aren't usually used in
the plural, so people don't know about it. Just like the plural of "amour" is
hardly ever used except in poetry.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.