User:CapnPrep/Sandbox/RP

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: Modern languages that have this type of plural suffix include: Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, French, Romansh, and Sardinian.
 * Spanish: buena madre "good mother (sing.)" → buenas madres "good mothers (plur.)"

The other strategy involves changing (or adding) the final vowel: The main examples of modern Romance languages exhibiting this type of plural marking are Italian and Romanian.
 * Italian: buona madre "good mother (sing.)" → buone madri "good mothers (plur.)"

Broadly speaking, languages spoken in areas to the north and west of Italy typically have s-marking of plurals, while languages spoken in central/southern Italy and to the east of Italy have vocalic marking of plurals.

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

Latin
The Romance languages are descendants of Vulgar Latin, which had more complex nominal morphology. For the present discussion, we can focus on the nominative and accusative forms of masculine and feminine nouns and adjectives of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd declensions, examples of which are shown below:

Origin of the plural suffix -s
-s derive from the Latin accusative endings -ŌS -ĀS -ĒS.

Plurals in -e and -i
However, there is some debate over the origin of the plurals of Italy and Romania, 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 nominative theory suggests that the -o plural -i and the -a plural -e are derived straightforwardly from nominative -Ī and -AE, respectively (it is known that AE > e in all Romance languages), and that the -e plural -i is derived by analogy with the -o plural. (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 starts by noting that Proto-Romance actually had both nominative and accusative endings. This is clear from languages like Old French, which have preserved both cases. However, all languages with both nominative and accusative case (Old French, Old Occitan, Old Sursilvan) agree in having forms derived from -ĀS in both nominative and accusative plurals of feminine nouns in -a, suggesting that Proto-Romance also had nominative -ĀS. Nominative -ĀS is also attested in Old Latin, suggesting that Proto-Romance may have preserved an older state of affairs that changed in urban Latin of Rome (but not in the spoken Latin of the provinces, which underlies the Romance languages). If true, there is no -AE from which Italian -e can be derived from. There is other evidence suggesting that Italian -e must derive from -ĀS:
 * 1) 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.)
 * 2) Neapolitan and certain other minority Italian languages have unexpected alternations like gatto "(male) cat", i atti "the (male) cats" vs. gatta "(female) cat", e ggatte "the (female) cats". In these languages, loss of  is expected between vowels; the form with, as in e ggatte, would normally only occur if there was a lost consonant formerly preceding the .  This suggests that Neapolitan e (standard Italian le) comes from Latin (ILL)ĀS, not *(ILL)AE.
 * 3) 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 in fact derived from the nominative plural.
 * 2) However, Proto-Romance had nominative plural -ĀS, not *-AE.
 * 3) The following sound changes took place:
 * 4) /as/ > /ai/, /es/ > /ei/.
 * 5) In unstressed syllables, /ai/ > /e/, /ei/ > /i/.

The first of these changes is almost certain, given examples like tu stai "you stand" < TŪ STĀS; Southern Italian crai "tomorrow" < CRĀS; tu sei "you are" < TŪ S(ED)ĒS; sei "six" < SEX (probably Proto-Italian *sess); Southern Italian trei "three" < TRĒS. 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 < 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. Subjunctive tu dormi < TŪ DORMĀS is similarly unexpected; again, we would expect *tu dorme. In this case, it appears that -i was generalized as the universal tu ending, both indicative and subjunctive, 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.)

If this theory is correct, something similar must have happened in Romanian.