Between feminine singular and neuter plural: Re-analysis patterns

Starting from the investigation of some neuter o stems that attest either masculine or feminine doublets in Latin, this paper discusses the development of the thematic neuter and its status within the Latin gender system. Thematic neuters may be regarded as one of the latest innovations in the Indo-European family, and most of them developed independently within the individual languages. Latin evidence shows in fact that some neuter o stems were created at a historical stage from ancient masculines of the same inflectional class. Particular attention is paid here to a set of nouns exhibiting fluctuations between a second-declension neuter o stem and a first-declension feminine a stem. These gender variations throw light on a progressive change of gender, and a detailed chronological examination actually reveals that all these forms are originally feminine nouns re-analysed as thematic neuters – an evolutionary pattern that is the opposite of what is currently assumed. This gender change can be related to the diachronic development of a number of morpho-syntactic patterns, which may have favoured such a re-analysis and which might have led to the genesis of these thematic neuters as a pure inner-Latin phenomenon.