Chapter 077Allen and Greenough's Latin GrammarDickinson CollegeChristopher Francese
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The regular Nominative plural of
i-
stems is
-ēs
,
The Indo-European ending of the nominative plural,
-ĕs
(preserved in Greek in consonant stems, as
ὄρτυξ, ὄρτυγ-ες
), contracts with a stem-vowel and gives
-ēs
in the Latin i-declension (cf, the Greek plural
ὄεις
). This
-ēs
was extended to consonant stems in Latin.
but
-īs
is occasionally found. The regular Accusative plural
-īs
is common, but not exclusively used in any word. An old form for both cases is
-
ei
s
(diphthong).