1898-99. | THE ORIGIN OF GENDER. 73 
verb in Greek, and the view suggested by Coleridge that this is not 
properly a plural, for while “there can be md¢zplzczty in things, there can 
be plurality only in persons,” seems still more probable when we recall 
that in the languages of America and Asia neuter nouns are distinguished 
from masculines solely by the fact that they have no plural. That it is 
not a plural but a sort of augmentative or collective is confirmed by its 
meaning, when it appears side by side with cognate forms with the 
ending of the masculine plural; a comparison of Iliad IV., 460, with 
Iliad V., 464, makes it plain that while 74? means individual thighs, 
pnpd is collective, meaning a lot of thighs. That Joca is collective as 
opposed to /oc¢ is a commonplace of Latin grammar, and the difference 
between #é4evdoe and xédev0a seems essentially the same. The plurals 
sitdé and Taptapa seem collectives rather than plurals. But these Greek 
so-called plurals in « become at times feminine singulars. Homer has 
olzos, m., singular, and ofa, n., plural, both meaning a house. But in 
Attic oixéa, a house, is f., singular, and has formed a new plural, o/zéa:. 
So 7véa, which is n., plural in Homer, has become f., singular, in Attic, 
and has formed a new plural, 7. In Oscan we find ¢erum, a bit of 
land, the plural of which is the Latin ¢ervra, properly a collection of bits 
of land, but now f., singular, and meaning a country. So ofera, f., in 
Plautus, has the same meaning as ofera, the plural of opus, and it is only 
later that it takes its usual meaning of care or attention. There seems 
to exist a similar relation between mendum and menda, actnum and 
acina, repulsum and repulsa. The process of thought that brings about 
the change from neuter plural to feminine singular may be illustrated 
from mendum and menda. Mendum is an individual fault, #enxda a lot 
of fault, then faults in bulk, then the abstract idea of fault. A 
significant coincidence is the fact that in the only words in Latin where 
we have feminines formed by the ending @ (older az), in gue and hee, 
the neuter plurals take the same peculiar ending. But Schmidt’s 
conclusion that neuter plurals in @ were originally feminine singulars 
and that that is the reason for their use with a singular verb in Greek, is 
not justified by the examples he cites; for in every case he cites it is 
plain that the feminine is more recent than the neuter plural, and he 
admits that he is unable to find a feminine in @ which has become a 
neuter plural. The natural conclusion from the examples he cites is 
that the neuter plurals are older, and that their construction in Greek 
with the singular is due to the fact that they are not properly plurals at 
all, but rather collectives or augmentatives. 
The natural process, by which they become feminine singular, is that 
outlined in the case of mendum, but it remains to be explained why 
