Romance languages have feminine nouns derived from Latin feminine and masculine derived from Latin masculine and neuter. Sound changes tend to render this two-way distinction one way or another, (almost) always merging masculine and neuter.
Could a Romance language plausibly go through sound changes that merge the Proto-Romance feminine and masculine? I had two ideas for how this could be done, and am looking for feedback on plausibility.
1. In Occitan, masculine -o is dropped, while some dialects have feminine -a /a/ becoming -o /ɔ/. If a Romance language had the same change to the feminine ending, but preserved the masculine ending, presumably they could both collapse to /o/ or /ɔ/ (possibly then shifting to another sound like /ə/ or back to /a/). The spelling would reflect the sound (presumably -o if /o/, -a if /a/, -o or -a if /ɔ/, and -a or -e if /ə/, depending on how the sound ends up).
2. Alternatively, could feminine -a and masculine -o simply collapse into /ə/? If they did, I assume this sound would be spelled -e, as it tends to be spelled that way when it appears in Romance languages (such as in the Old French feminine).
As for the definite article, something like Spanish el or Italian il wound serve to keep masculine distinct from feminine, so instead this hypothetical Romance language would have had lo when it had genders, fusing lo and la into whatever form the de-gendered nouns take. Not sure how to deal with the indefinite article though as the masculine seems to be universally some variant of un. Maybe feminine una simply drops its vowel?
Are either of these reduction systems possible?
Could a Romance language plausibly go through sound changes that merge the Proto-Romance feminine and masculine? I had two ideas for how this could be done, and am looking for feedback on plausibility.
1. In Occitan, masculine -o is dropped, while some dialects have feminine -a /a/ becoming -o /ɔ/. If a Romance language had the same change to the feminine ending, but preserved the masculine ending, presumably they could both collapse to /o/ or /ɔ/ (possibly then shifting to another sound like /ə/ or back to /a/). The spelling would reflect the sound (presumably -o if /o/, -a if /a/, -o or -a if /ɔ/, and -a or -e if /ə/, depending on how the sound ends up).
2. Alternatively, could feminine -a and masculine -o simply collapse into /ə/? If they did, I assume this sound would be spelled -e, as it tends to be spelled that way when it appears in Romance languages (such as in the Old French feminine).
As for the definite article, something like Spanish el or Italian il wound serve to keep masculine distinct from feminine, so instead this hypothetical Romance language would have had lo when it had genders, fusing lo and la into whatever form the de-gendered nouns take. Not sure how to deal with the indefinite article though as the masculine seems to be universally some variant of un. Maybe feminine una simply drops its vowel?
Are either of these reduction systems possible?
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