Romance plurals

This article describes the different ways of forming the plural forms of nouns and adjectives in the Romance languages, and discusses various hypotheses about how these systems emerged historically from the declension patterns of Vulgar Latin.

Two types of plural marking

Romance languages can be divided into two broad groups depending on how the regular plural forms of nouns and adjectives are formed.

One strategy is the addition of the plural suffix -s. For example:

  • Spanish: buena madre "good mother (sing.)" → buenas madres "good mothers (plur.)"

Modern languages that have this type of plural suffix include Catalan, French, Occitan, Portuguese, Galician, Romansh, Sardinian and Spanish.

The other strategy involves changing (or adding) the final vowel:

  • Italian: buona madre "good mother (sing.)" → buone madri "good mothers (plur.)"

The main examples of modern Romance languages exhibiting this type of plural marking are Italian, Gallo-Italic languages and Romanian.

The historical development of these two distinct types of plural morphology is an important and controversial topic in Romance philology.

Latin

The following table illustrates the singular and plural forms of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd declensions in Classical Latin.

bona "good (fem.)" bonus "good (masc.)" mater "mother" homo "man"
singularpluralsingularplural singularpluralsingularplural
nominativebonabonae bonusbonī matermatrēs homōhomĭnēs
accusativebonambonās bonumbonōs matremmatrēs homĭnemhomĭnēs

The corresponding Proto-Romance forms are shown below:<efn>See Romance_languages#Sound changes for a description of the regular sound correspondences relating Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin.</efn>

singularpluralsingularplural singularpluralsingularplural
nominativeˈbɔnaˈbɔnɛ ˈbɔnʊˈbɔni ˈmatreˈmatres ˈɔmʊˈɔmines
accusativeˈbɔnaˈbɔnas ˈbɔnʊˈbɔnos ˈmatreˈmatres ˈɔmineˈɔmines

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 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 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 "nominative" theory appears more straightforward at first; however, the "accusative" theory is more common currently.

The Italian endings are -i (for nouns in -o and -e), and -e (for nouns in -a); the very few remnants of the Latin neuter nouns in -um can take -a or -e 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 /tʃ/ (the expected palatal outcome before -Ī), but feminine amica has plural amiche, with /k/ that is unexpected if e < -AE, but expected if e < -ĀS. (The change AE > e occurred long before palatalization, hence /tʃ/ is expected here too. It is unlikely that this unusual distribution is due to analogy; if so, either /tʃ/ or /k/ would be expected in both plural forms.)

Additionally, the isolated Italian word dunque 'thus' corresponds to Sardinian duncas. Neither word can be derived from Latin DUMQUAM, and the isolated nature of the word means that analogical change is unlikely. Sardinian duncas 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:

  1. Italian plurals are indeed derived from the nominative plural.
  2. However, Proto-Romance had the feminine nominative plural -ĀS, not *-AE.
  3. The following sound changes took place:
    1. /as/ > /ai/, /es/ > /ei/. (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.)
    2. In unstressed syllables, /ai/ > /e/, /ei/ > /i/.

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. 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 /tu dɔrmes/ < 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

    See also

    References
    • D’hulst, Yves (2006). "Romance plurals". Lingua. 116 (8): 1303–1329. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2005.09.003.
    • Maiden, Martin (1996). "On the Romance Inflectional Endings -i and -e". Romance Philology. 50 (2): 147–182.
    • Maiden, Martin; Smith, John Charles; Ledgeway, Adam (2010). The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages: Structures. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-80072-3.
    • Tekavčić, Pavao (1980). Grammatica storica dell'italiano. 2. Bologna: Il Mulino.
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