deabus (was: "ex before consonant > e" non-rule etc.)

At 3:26 pm -0400 10/5/01, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
[snip]
>
>But as a quasirelated point of curiosity, who came up with "deabus" as
>the dat/abl plural of "dea" (?) (goddess)?
The Romans   :)
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At 8:08 pm -0400 10/5/01, Muke Tever wrote:
[snip]
>
>"<Filia> _daughter_ and <dea> _goddess_ have irregular dative and ablative
>plurals: <filia:bus, dea:bus>. This is to avoid confusion with the
>corresponding
>forms of <filius> _son_ and <deus> _god_."
Quite right - tho in fact the regular forms _deis_ and _filiis_ were
occasionally found; but the dat. & ablative plurals of these two words were
formed by analogy with the -bus of the 3rd, 4th & 5th declensions in order,
as Muke says, to avoid confusion with the corresponding masculine forms:
_dea:bus_ and _filia:bus_ were the more common forms in Classical Latin.

Indeed, forms like _feminabus_ are occasionally found, but were not
regarded as standard in the Classical period.

Ray.




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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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