Re: Neuter girls (was Re: French)

Jan van Steenbergen sikyal:

> > An IE habit, I think.  Diminutives were neuter in ancient Greek and their
> > descendants remain neuter, e.g.
>
> This makes me think of something else. When did Latin lose its neuter gender?
> Since none of the Romance languages has it, I would presume that Vulgar Latin
> didn't have it neither.
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.

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.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton

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