Luigi de Guzman <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:On Tue, 30 Mar 2004 21:24:17 -0800, Benjamin Lewis <[email hidden]>
wrote:
<snip>Quoted message said:Here's what this says about "vira".
<snip>The discussion to which you have linked cites, Allen & Greenough's (O
you twin banes of schoolboys everywhere!) opinion on the matter, with
which I concur:I have yet to encounter any Latin neuter noun whose nominative and
accusative plurals did not end in -a. Donatus bears me out, using
*scamnum (bench) as his example:[I have capitalised the inflections]
Quoted message said:
The rule is quite explicit: any noun of the neuter gender has a
single simple case in the nominative, accusative, and vocative cases
together. In the case of *virus, that form is, in the singular,
*virus, and in the plural, (theoretically) *vira. The essay you have
cited is therefore in error when it expects the vocative form of
*virus to be *O vire.
Never. "virus" is a rare case of a neuter noun of the o-declension.
So the "would-be" plural is viri, virorum, viris, viros, viris.
Klaus G.
Quoted message said:
[...]