--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "petegray" <petegray@...> wrote:
> > I think it can reasonably be said that Italian
> > words like _uovo_ (singular, masculine), _uova_ (plural,
> > feminine) 'egg' are neuter rather than of mixed gender.
>
> Grammatical gender refers not to the form of the noun, but to the
> form of adjectives, articles, determinants, etc which agree with
> that noun. So I disagree - the term "neuter" would not make sense
> in Italian, and plurals like uova, paia, braccia etc must be called
> feminine plural.
>
> Peter
I agree with you here. I have to add tough, my remarque with "I
shouldn't use "neutra" within Romance" was pointing not to the
forms "neutra" versus "neuter" but just to the almost inexistence of
this gender in Romance.
The flash-point of the remarque was in fact the desinence "-oris"
which at least in Rom. is used for neuter gender in the plural forms.
sg "puts" ( < puteus) - pl. "putzuri"
sg "vad" ( < vadus) - pl. "vaduri"
pod-poduri
loc-locuri
etc
Interesting, the words as "ou" ( < ovum) do not have the plural _even
if they are neuter_ in "-uri"(< -oris ?) but they have a curious
plural in "-ã":
ou - ouã(< uoua)
Why I say "interesting" here? Because the plural is the same as in
Italian and, different from the normal neuter plural desinence in
Romanian.
So the word "egg" has in sng & pl the same form as in Italian:
sg: - Rom. "ou" / It. "uovo"
pl: - Rom. "ouã" / It. "uova"
since the intervocalic "w" ( herewith included Latin "b,v" ) is
allways preserved , then one has to asks himself how does it comme
the both forms, sg. and pl. are identicaly in Rom. and Italian ? Do
we have indeed to do with accidental identicaly developments from
Latin to Italian and Romanian or we have to speak here about loans
from a language to another language?
alex