txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....

[Douglas G Kilday]

Leo A. Connolly (10 Jan 2001) wrote:

>The larger question is why we have _leche_ (as well as It. _latte_, Fr. _lait_
>when there was no **_lactem_ so long as the word was neuter.  But if _lactem_
>developed, then gender reassignment would be a must, and formally there would
>have been no reason to choose masculine over feminine.  Why shouldn't a
>product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything, it's the masculine
>forms that need explaining.

Some brief comments: First, *lactem is not required to explain the /t/ in
the Romance forms. Varro used the neuter <lact>: lactuca [dicitur] a lacte,
quod holus id habet lact (L.L. V.21.3). Caesar reputedly scoffed at <lact>
on the grounds that no Latin word could end in two stops, but it is
reasonable that <lact> was the form in common use while <lac> belonged
strictly to the urban dialect of Rome.

Second, if the word for 'milk' had been de-neutered to *lactis, it would
have had the same form as the established word for 'intestine': ita cibi
vacivitate venio lassis lactibus (Plaut. Curc. 319); fundolum a fundo, quod
non ut reliquae lactes, sed ex una parte sola apertum (Varr. L.L. V.22.7).

Third, terms denoting products, attributes, or appendages of a particular
"natural" gender which carry a different "grammatical" gender are too
numerous to list here (and some are inappropriate for general audiences).

DGK