À la recherche du neutre protoroman. Réflexions à partir de l’expérience de rédaction et de révision de l’article */'ram‑u/ s.n. ‘branche ; branchage’ du DÉRom

This study describes the development of our thinking and of the analyses that we carried out while preparing the article */'ram‑u/ n.n. ‘branch; set of branches of a tree’ as part of the Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman (DÉRom) project. Throughout our contribution, we will focus our attention on the Romanian and Italian lexical items used to reconstruct the Proto-Romance etymon */'ram‑u/ n.n. and the other three morphologically evolved protoforms */'ram‑a/ f.n., */'ram‑ora/ n.pl.n. and */'ram‑u/ m.n. Indeed, the Romanian and Italian cognates have an increased importance in this case since their particularities allow (or even oblige) us to assign the neuter gender to the Proto-Romance etymon. It is not by chance that the same Romanian and Italian cognates posed the greatest difficulties during the elaboration of this article, given that the debates and commentaries carried out by Romanists concerning the neuter gender continue to be rather stormy without yet reaching a consensus.