Heard: "loci" with [k]

[Laurence Horn]

On Feb 23, 2013, at 1:31 AM, Herb Stahlke wrote:

> Was there also a nom. sg. locum?
>
>

As I recall (I don't have my Lewis & Short on me), we learned in Latin class that this was one of those nouns--I guess we'd call them transgender now--that shifts from masculine in the singular to neuter in the plural, so I suspect there was no "locum", unless we were misinformed (or I misremember, always a possibility).  But the earlier discussion indicates that any such emasculation depends on the context, or the sense of "locus" being pluralized, which I certainly didn't remember.  (I'd always assumed that later ignorami just assimilated "locus"/"loca" to the more usual -us/-i second declension pattern, for the same reason that you hear "octopi" and the like.)

LH
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 9:52 PM, W Brewer <brewerwa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       W Brewer <brewerwa at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Heard: "loci" with [k]
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> HS: <<<church influenced Lutheran ... [lotsi]>>>
>> JB: <<<which ancient philosophy ...?>>>
>> WB: Reminds me of my Swedish Doktorvater (a devout Lutheran) who did just
>> that, Latin <ti, ci> [tsi] in his Medieval Latin classes. Cf. "Latin
>> regional pronunciation" in Wikipedia.
>>
>> Btw, there was also another plural for locus:  loca.
>>
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