Re: Virus (was Mesozoic Diseases)

[Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu>]

Quoting David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>:

> That is genus, stem gener- not just in the plural but in all cases 
> except nominative singular, accusative singular, and vocative 
> singular. Other examples are lepus, lepor- "hare", mus, mur- "mouse", 
> and ius, iur- "1. law/right, 2. soup/juice".

These alternations arise because of a sound change in late 
Pre-Classical Latin in which /s/ became /r/ (probably by way of [z]) 
between vowels:  iûs > iûs; iûs-is > iûris.


> There is also a whole declension class where nouns end in -us but are 
> feminine. Examples: salus, salut- "hail", palus, palud- "swamp".

Yeah, but those don't really end in -us but in -ûs (of course, 
underlyingly they end in /ût-s/ and /ûd-s/, respectively).

Nick Pharris