Heard: "loci" with [k]

[Eric Nielsen]

According to Gustavus Fischer's *Latin Grammar* (just happened to
be cleaning out my attic), "jocus" and "frenum" are other members of this
word group: Second declension nouns with both a masculine and a neuter
plural.

Of this group, only "locus" is given as having different meanings depending
on the gender of its plural.

He also refers one to *pluralia tantum,* plural only words; and *heterological
*nouns, words having a change of meaning when pluralized, e.g., castrum
(castle) / castra (camp).

Eric

On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 2:15 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Heard: "loci" with [k]
>
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>
> 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]
> >>
> >>
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> >>
> >> 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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