Petra Sleeman (editor) - Partitive Determiners, Partitive Pronouns and Partitive Case

Partitivity is a linguistic notion that is used to denote diverse phenomena, including but not limited to those presented in (1)-(7) below.

In the proper partitive construction (1), a subset of three indefinite books is picked out of a larger definite set of books. In the pseudo-partitive construction (2) the quantity of a substance (wine) is measured by the quantity noun glass and no larger set of the quantity is introduced in the discourse ():

). The interpretation of these determiners is partially similar to null (or absent) indefinite determiners in many other languages, as shown by the English glosses.

There are partitive pronouns that resume the nominal expression denoting the superset in partitive constructions, such as the Dutch weak pronoun er in (5a), which requires the presence of the quantifier in Netherlandic Standard Dutch, or the clitic ne in Italian (5b) (and en in French). Note that ne/en can appear without the quantifier, resuming a determinerless indefinite expression, often called bare noun:

Note that er in (5a) does not imply reference to a definite superset. The basic structure of (5a) should therefore be totally similar to the quantified expression drie boeken (three books) equivalent to (3), not to (1), whose equivalent is drie van haar boeken (three of her books). In (5b) ne can resume a determinerless indefinite nominal. Thus, the basic structure can be tre libri (three books), but it could also be just a bare noun libri (books), with an indefinite interpretation. It is controversial whether these clitic pronouns can resume the definite superset. This would be suggested by the fact that these pronouns have oblique case morphology and can resume genitive and locative prepositional phrases, a property that is shared by the prepositional phrase denoting the superset in partitive constructions (henceforth called the partitive PP).

In richly inflected languages, ablative and genitive case related to partitivity is expectedly found on nominal expressions, as in Turkish and Lithuanian:

Finally, there are richly inflected languages, notably Finno-Ugric languages and Basque, which mark partitivity in the broad-sense with a dedicated case:

As shown by the glosses, the nominals marked with partitive case in (7) have the interpretation of weak indefinites.

The phenomena above present many similarities, among which the notion of indefinite quantity, which is an ingredient of partitive and pseudo-partitive constructions and which is the main property of partitive determiners, partitive pronouns and partitive case. The study of partitivity therefore intersects with the study of (in)definiteness, which is an elusive notion itself (cf. ), expressed by very different markers (including zero marking even in languages with articles, as noted for English above), taking many different semantic and pragmatic interpretations (specificity, presupposition of existence, free choice), and notoriously interacting with clausal features such as polarity, modality, aspect, and quantification.

Although the interest in the concept of partitivity has continuously increased in the last decades and has given rise to considerable advances in research, partially represented in the considerations made so far (cf. Luraghi & Huumo (eds.) 2014; variation displayed by partitive elements across European languages is far from being well-described, let alone well-understood. There are two main obstacles to this: on the one hand, theoretical linguistics and typological linguistics are fragmented in different methodological approaches that hinder the full sharing of cross-theoretic advances; on the other hand, partitive elements have been analyzed in restricted linguistic environments, which would benefit from a broader perspective. The aim of the PARTE project, from which this volume stems, is precisely to bring together linguists of different theoretical approaches using different methodologies to address this notion in its many facets.

The volume wants to address the three core notions of partitivity, namely partitive structures, partitive determiners and partitive pronouns (including partitive case) in different languages, language families and language types, from different perspectives. The volume also aims to reflect on the many different terms used in different frameworks and hypotheses to name the same phenomenon and, vice versa on the ambiguously used term partitivity to name very different phenomena.