Rudolf Thurneysen as a ›Sabellicist‹ and the Umbrian neuter plurals

This paper focuses on Rudolf Thurneysen’s contributions as a ›Sabellicist‹. While primarily renowned for his works in Celtic studies, Thurneysen also made significant contributions to the study of the Sabellian languages. The first part of the paper reviews his works on this topic, examining their content, methods, results, and influence on subsequent research. The second part explores Thurneysen’s analysis (Thurneysen 1893, 1898) of Umbrian nominative and accusative plural forms of neuter stems. Specifically, Thurneysen demonstrated that all the nomina- tive plural forms in -or (-[o]r) and accusative plural forms in -uf, -of (-[o]f ) are neuter forms (-[o]- < -[ā]-) with added masculine/feminine endings -r and -f/-f — alongside regular forms in -u, -o (-[o] < -[ā]). Conversely, masculine nominative and accusative plural forms appear exclusively as -us (-[u]s) > -ur (-[u]r) and -u(f), -u(f) (-[u]f), respectively. Initially met with resistance and later often overlooked or partially accepted, this hypothesis is supported by phonetic and morphosyntactic evidence and should now be considered confirmed.