The plurals of the

Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...

and their historical origin and development are an important area of study in

comparative The degrees of comparison of adjectives and adverbs are the various forms taken by adjectives and adverbs when used to compare two entities (comparative degree), three or more entities (superlative degree), or when not comparing entities (positi ...

and

historical History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categ ...

Romance linguistics. There are two general categories that Romance languages fall into based on the way they form plurals. Languages of the first category, belonging to Western Romance, generally employ a plural

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

morpheme -s (meaning the "sigmatic plural"). Languages of the second category, belonging to

Italo-Dalmatian The Italo-Dalmatian languages, or Central Romance languages, are a group of Romance languages spoken in Italy, Corsica (France), and formerly in Dalmatia (Croatia). Italo-Dalmatian can be split into:Hammarström, Harald & Forkel, Robert & Haspe ...

and Eastern Romance, form the plural by changing the final vowel of the singular form, or suffixing a new vowel to it (meaning the "vocalic plural"). There are various hypotheses about how these systems—especially the second—emerged historically from the

declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence by way of an inflection. Declension may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and det ...

patterns of

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Colloquial, Popular, Spoken or Vernacular Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. ''Vulgar Latin'' a ...

, and this remains an area of much debate and controversy amongst scholars of Romance.

Two types of plural marking

Romance languages can be broadly divided into two broad groups based on the historical trajectory that the pluralization of nouns, articles, and adjectives took. In the first group, consisting of the Romance languages north or west of the La Spezia–Rimini Line (i.e. Western Romance), plurals are generally formed by the addition of the plural suffix (or a closely related sound e.g. ). For example, in Spanish: * * In a few of these languages, such as modern spoken French and the

Western Lombard Western Lombard is a group of varieties of the Lombard language, a Romance language of the Gallo-Italic subgroup. It is spoken primarily in Italy and Switzerland. Within Italy, it is prevalent in the Lombard provinces of Milan, Monza and Brianz ...

varieties, the plural was historically formed this way, but further sound changes resulted in the

elision In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run to ...

of this final for most or all nouns, adjectives, and/or articles (though in French it is preserved in the

orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...

and in speech may resurface in some contexts in French; see liaison). In these languages, plural nouns may sometimes be distinguished by the form of articles, but not because they have an (e.g. Milanese ). The second group, consisting of the Romance languages south or east of the La Spezia–Rimini Line (i.e.

and Eastern Romance), involves changing (or adding) the final vowel; for example: * Italian: "good mother (sing.)" → "good mothers (plur.)"

Latin

The following table illustrates the singular and plural forms of the first,

second The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of U ...

, and third

s in

Classical Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a Literary language, literary standard language, standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It formed parallel to Vulgar Latin around 75 BC out of Old Latin ...

. The corresponding Proto-Romance forms are shown below:

Origin of plural ''-s''

The plural forms in ''-s'' in languages like Spanish (for example, ''buenas madres'' "good mothers", ''buenos hombres'' "good men") can be straightforwardly explained as descendants of Latin accusative forms in ''-as'', ''-os'' and ''-es''. On the other hand, 3rd declension nouns and adjectives have ''-es'' in both nominative and accusative, however, so the ''-s'' plural for these words could derive from either case form. There is also evidence that Vulgar Latin may have preserved the nominative plural ending ''-as'' in the 1st declension, attested in

Old Latin Old Latin, also known as Early, Archaic or Priscan Latin (Classical ), was the Latin language in the period roughly before 75 BC, i.e. before the age of Classical Latin. A member of the Italic languages, it descends from a common Proto-Italic ...

and replaced by ''-ae'' in literary Classical Latin. The Romance varieties that maintained the distinction between nominative and accusative cases in the medieval period (

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...

, Old Occitan, Old Sursilvan) have forms in ''-s'' for both nominative and accusative plurals of feminine nouns of the first declension.

Origin of vocalic plurals

There is debate over the origin of the plurals of Italian and Romanian, with some claiming that they derive from the Latin nominative endings -Ī -AE and others that they partly derive from the Latin accusative endings. The Italian endings are ''-i'' (for nouns in ''-o,'' ''-e'' and masculine nouns in general), and ''-e'' (for feminine nouns in ''-a''); the few remnants of the Latin neuter nouns in can take ''-a'' for the plural. The nominative theory suggests that ''-i'' as the plural of nouns in ''-o'' and ''-e'' as the plural of nouns in ''-a'' are derived straightforwardly from nominative -Ī and -AE, respectively (it is known that AE > ''e'' in all Romance languages), and that the plural ''-i'' for nouns in ''-e'' is derived by analogy with the plural of nouns in ''-o''. (The corresponding nominative form in Latin is -ĒS. With the loss of final /s/, singular and plural would both have ''-e'', which is problematic and was rectified by borrowing ''-i''.) The accusative theory proposes that Italian ''-e'' derives from ''-as''. One piece of evidence is that in Italian, masculine ''amico'' has plural ''amici'' with (the expected palatal outcome before -Ī), but feminine ''amica'' has plural ''amiche'', with that is unexpected if ''e'' < -AE, but expected if ''e'' < -ĀS. (The change AE > ''e'' occurred long before palatalization, hence is expected here too. It is unlikely that this unusual distribution is due to analogy; if so, either or would be expected in both plural forms.) Additionally,

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...

feminine plurals end in ''-es'' in both the nominative and the oblique (accusative); this may be evidence in favour of a more general Proto-Romance replacement of -AE by -ĀS. Additionally, the isolated Italian word ''dunque'' 'thus' corresponds to Sardinian . Neither word can be derived from Latin DUMQUAM, and the isolated nature of the word means that analogical change is unlikely. Sardinian suggests Proto-Romance *DUNQUAS, with ''dunque'' the expected outcome (even down to the unusual ''qu'' preceding ''e'') if -AS > ''e''. The "accusative" theory essentially suggests: #Italian plurals are indeed derived from the nominative plural. #However, Proto-Romance had the feminine nominative plural -ĀS, not *-AE. #The following sound changes took place: ##/as/ > /ai/, /es/ > /ei/, /os/ > /oi/. (If the /s/ was pronounced as [ʃ], [ʂ], [ɕ] or [ç], this may have led to an off-glide [j] after the vowel, as occurs in Portuguese and Catalan.) ##In unstressed syllables, /ai/ > /e/, /ei/ > /i/. (However, /oi/ appears to have become /o/.) The first of these changes is almost certain, given examples like ''tu stai'' 'you stand' < TŪ STĀS; Italian ''crai'' 'tomorrow' (archaic, literary or regional) < CRĀS; ''tu sei'' 'you are' < TŪ *SES; ''sei'' 'six' < SEX (probably Proto-Italian ''*sess''). Note also ''noi'' 'we' < NŌS, ''voi'' 'you ( pl.)' < . The second sound change is cross-linguistically extremely common. Furthermore, it explains a number of otherwise unexplainable forms in Italian: *The plural ''-i'' corresponding to Latin -ĒS *Verbal ''tu dormi'' 'you sleep' < Proto-Western-Romance < TŪ DORMIS *Verbal ''tu tieni'' 'you hold' < TŪ TENĒS *Subjunctive ''(che) tu ami'' 'you love' < TŪ AMĒS Indicative ''tu ami'' 'you love' < TŪ AMĀS is unexpected; we would expect ''*tu ame''. However, ''tu ame'' is in fact attested in Old Tuscan. In this case, it appears that ''-i'' was generalized as the universal ''tu'' ending at the expense of ''-e''. (Note the even more striking generalization of first plural ''-iamo'', originally only the subjunctive form of ''-ere'' and ''-ire'' verbs.)

Notes

References

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External links

The Romance noun: A comparative-historical study of plural formation
{{Romance languages Romance languages Grammatical number