# Third declension of some neuter nouns.



## Entoursis

Hello.

Could you please explain the type of 3rd declension that applies to neuter nouns with a stem ended with 2 consonates? I know that "os" and "cor" are of 3rd mixed declension, but what about lac(lactis) and similar? I have 2 books saying the opposite (one tells "lactia,lactium" for nom. and gen. plural is correct, the other tells "lacta, lactum" is), and a lot of gramar books and web-pages simply tells nothing about this nouns, and I am really confused... 
Hope you can help...
Thanks.


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## machadinho

My Latin is basic.

I couldn't find a passage with any of *lacta, *lactum, *lactia, or *lactium. But since the ablative of lac is lacte (instead of *lacti), it seems to me there is *no* reason to believe there is a hidden vowel -*i-* that would show up in its plural genitive form, if there really is such thing as the plural genitive form of lac.

Compare:
nom:lac, voc:lac, acc:lac, gen:lactis, dat:lacti, abl:*lacte*
nom:mare, voc:mare, acc:mare, gen:maris, dat:mari, abl:*mari*


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## CapnPrep

machadinho said:


> But since the ablative of lac is lacte (instead of *lacti), it seems to me there is *no* reason to believe there is a hidden vowel -*i-* that would show up in its plural genitive form, if there really is such thing as the plural genitive form of lac.


Unfortunately, this sort of reasoning isn't always reliable. The whole point of introducing the notion of "mixed declension" is to recognize that there are nouns that have _-e_ in the abl. sing. but _-ium_ in the gen. plur., such as _nox_ (_noct*e*_, _noct*i*um_) or _ars_ (_art*e*_, _art*i*um_). The problem is that the "mixing" can be unstable, and many nouns have two attested forms in certain cases.

The two-consonant rule is only useful for masculine and feminine nouns. There is nothing special about neuter stems ending in two consonants, and there are so few of them that it's not really worthwhile to look for a rule. You could just memorize them, except that there is disagreement about what the "correct" declension of certain nouns should be. For mass nouns like _lac_, _mel_, or _fel_, the plural is understandably rare and unattested in some case forms. More surprisingly, the genitive plural is unknown/uncertain even for nouns like _cor_ (_cord-_) and _os_ (_oss-_). See e.g. Allen & Greenough (§103, g).


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## fdb

To stay with the word for "milk": In classical Latin it never occurs in the plural, so the supposed forms which you found for the nom. and gen. pl. are all hypothetical, if not to say fictitious. The attested singular forms actually show a lot of variation. For the nom. and acc. we have not only lac, but also (especially in early authors) lacte and even lact, and for the acc. we also have (1st cent. AD and later) lactem. 

In the plural only you also have the related feminine noun lactes, "intestines, chitterlings", from which one would expect the gen. lactium, but I am not sure that this ever occurs.


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## Entoursis

Thank you for all the answers.

Well, it seems the problem is that when I was training to declinate the words I was not focusing on their meaning. It's true that milk can hardly be pretended in plural, and that must be an answer. My confusion was provoked by a book giving lac as an example of third mixed declension (lactium gen.pl. form was shown) as a noun of mixed 3rd declension, but all other books never mentioned it (some websites also show lactum gen.pl. form with no explaination). Obviously, the authors of the first book gave this noun's plural declension accidently, the other books never mentioned it just because it doesn't exist.
Of course, I never met lactium/lactum in a text, I was just trying to declinate it alone without context.

Is it possible to state that among all neuter nouns that come within the 2consonnate ending rule only cor and os have plural, others don't, that's why there's no sence to list them as mixed 3rd declension nouns? Or are there the others?


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## CapnPrep

Entoursis said:


> Is it possible to state that among all neuter nouns that come within the 2consonnate ending rule only cor and os have plural, others don't, that's why there's no sence to list them as mixed 3rd declension nouns? Or are there the others?


I think we have mentioned just about all the 2-consonant neuters in this thread already (but, as I said, there doesn't seem to be any reason to treat 2-consonant stems separately from all other neuter stems). One additional example _far_ (_farr-_) is listed by A&G (see link above) as defective in the plural: nominative/accusative _farra_ only, no genitive or dative/ablative plural.


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