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Re: CHAT: Worse Greek 102 (was: Bad Latin 101)

From:Jesse Bangs <jaspax@...>
Date:Sunday, February 4, 2001, 3:11
> Of course in Vulgar Latin it is quite clear that there was a drift of > commonly used 3rd neuters to the second declension, e.g. > > LATIN FRENCH SPANISH PORT. ITALIAN ROMANIAN > tempus, temps tiempo tempo tempo tempu > temporis > > corpus, corps cuerpo corpo corpo ?? > corporis > > Fraid I don't know the Romanian for "body".
Romanian for "time" is actually 'timp', and "body" is 'corp'. I'm not sure where you saw 'tempu,' although it's a plausible form for very archaic Old Romanian. Interestingly, Romanian preserved the neuter gender and generalized from these nouns to create its neuter plural ending -uri. The process began with the replacement of the neuter plural endings with feminine plural endings, so that the plural of 'corpus' was something like 'corpores' instead of the proper Latin 'corpora.' Normal sound changes working on 'corpores' turned it into 'corpuri,' and the resulting pairs 'corp/corpuri' and 'timp/timpuri' were generalized. This has become the productive class for monosyllabic neuter nouns and foreign words, so the modern Romanian plural of 'taxi' is 'taxiuri'! Jesse Bangs