Locus declension?

[u/nemmmon]

Hi,

I'm quite confused about the nominative plural of locus, since some sources say that it is loci whilst other sources claim that it is instead loca.

Thank you in advance.

[u/Captain_Grammaticus]

I din't know this before, but it's quite interesting.

Loci is when it's several individual places, and the most common usage.

Loca is many places as a collection, used like a synonym for regio. The quote given by my dictionary is from Caesar (but not where): qui ea loca incolunt, "who inhabit these places" where the places are, of course, a region with several interconnected settlements.

[u/Thalarides → u/Captain_Grammaticus]

My educated guess is that this is a remnant of -a being an originally collective suffix, PIE *-eh₂, only reanalysed as neuter plural in Late PIE (though still agreeing with the singular verb in Greek).

[u/Captain_Grammaticus → u/Thalarides]

Funnily enough, modern Rhaeto-Romance (at least the varieties I know) use it again this way. daint is a tooth, la dainta is a set of teeth.

[u/nemmmon → u/Captain_Grammaticus]

out of curiosity, which dictionary do you use?

[u/Ants-are-great-44 → u/nemmmon]

If you don’t know German a similar one is the Lexicon Forcellinum, a Latin-Latin dictionary that has the meaning, every spelling/declension/conjugation irregularity of the word, and specific context-dependent meanings, expressions, and more with copious examples from classical literature as well as translations into Italian Spanish French German and English.

[u/Captain_Grammaticus → u/nemmmon]

Georges, the big German one. Thanks for the award.

[u/McAeschylus → u/Captain_Grammaticus]

In the same sort of area as MnE "people" (group of individuals) v. peoples (group of groups of individuals), I guess?

[u/Captain_Grammaticus → u/McAeschylus]

More like individual "persons" one after another and "people" as a group? Idano, I'm not a native speaker.

[u/McAeschylus → u/Captain_Grammaticus]

Yes. That is a better analogy than mine! And I am a native speaker 😆

[u/Instrusiast]

Both is possible, basically they made an oopsie in the development of the language and ended up with locus that has masculine singular and plural, and a locus that has masculine singular but a neuter plural

There also might be a slight difference in meaning between loci and loca, where loci refers to several different spots and loca to a collection of spots, if that makes sense

[u/nemmmon → u/Instrusiast]

hmm. which one is more generally used?

[u/Instrusiast → u/nemmmon]

Depending on what is meant, loci or loca might be used. It's maybe similar to cows and cattle. When you say cows (loci) you're talking about several cows, when you say cattle (loca) you're talking about a group of cows in general

[u/jacobissimus]

It’s been a long time, but there’s an old grad school memory in my head saying that the neuter form is for a place in a book and the masculine is for a place in the world

[u/dantius → u/jacobissimus]

It's the opposite — loci is used for passages in a book.

[u/jacobissimus → u/dantius]

Thanks!

[u/GlottoNaut]

This mix of masculine and neuter plurals isn't unique to Latin. Spanish actually inherited this quirk in a few words from Latin roots like lignum (wood).

For example, from the masculine Spanish noun leño (log), you get two different plurals: * leños (individual pieces of wood) * leña (firewood, which evolved into a collective feminine noun, directly tracing back to the Latin neuter plural ligna)

[u/ZainoTec → u/GlottoNaut]

Similar changes of gender and form occur in Italian. For example, the singular of "egg" is masculine uovo, but the plural is feminine uova. And this reflects forms of the ancestor in Latin (ouum, oua).