txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....

[petegray]

> There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
> Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian. I seem to remember Posner
> saying something to the extent that [in some cases] Spanish evidently
> derived feminine forms from the plurals while French and Italian derived
> masculine forms from the singulars

My copy of Posner's The Romance Languages has a mention of la leche on page
135, but no discussion of this process of origin.  She does, however,
mention that some Latin neuters "hesitated in gender" even within Latin -
and this is probably the origin of divergent outcomes.

Peter