Re: Feminization of plurals?
| From: | Edgard Bikelis <bikelis@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, February 11, 2009, 5:23 |
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Kind of old, but may be of interest:
Brugmann - The nature and origin of the noun genders in the Indo-European
languages
<http://www.archive.org/details/natureoriginofno00brugiala>
There is a longish explanation about plural neuters becoming singular
feminines, as in greek and sometimes in vedic sanskrit the neuter plural
takes singular verbs... like pánta rheĩ 'everything flows'. It sounds very
reasonably morphologically (the -h2 is common to both), but semantically it
seems weird to me... still, there are some plural neuters from latin that
entered in portuguese as feminines... singulare tanta:
lignum, ligna: lenho 'wood', lenha 'firewood'
ouum, oua: ovo 'egg', ova 'fish eggs'
Edgard.
On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 1:07 AM, Adnan Majid <dsamajid@...> wrote:
Reply