Talk:Partitive case

It's funny but the translation of "Onko teillä kirjat?" would have been about forty years ago: "Do you have papers?" Meaning legal papers, marriage certificate, passport or some such. But because english is so pervasive the translation of "Do you have papers?" today is "Onko teillä paperit?". But still the finnish name of birthcertificate for those who were baptised just after being born is kirkonkirjat.Linkato1 (talk) 13:21, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

what about French? I remember studying an "article partitif". "J'ai des bouteilles de vin," I have some bottles of wine. "des" is a contraction of "de" + "les", "de" being "of" and "les" being plural for "the". The use of "des" as opposed to simply "les" is to identify this as a partitive case, I think... because "J'ai les bouteilles de vin" would mean you had all the bottles of wine in the world. Someone with more knowledge than I, please contribute? glasperlenspiel 03:17, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I think you're right about it, except that it's not a partitive case (since there aren't cases in French) but a partitive function expressed by other means, see Partitive. Adam78 12:38, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Hello everyone! I think it'd be great if we created a site devoted to declension and conjugation in various languages, where a script, linked to a database, would generate the appropriate forms, depending on the input. What do you think? Petusek
 * Such systems are very complex. An encyclopedia isn't the right platform. --Vuo 17:58, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

A kind of such site already exists, see Verbix. Adam78 19:18, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for this! The partitive makes Finnish difficult to speak accurately and I never before understood what it really meant. My big frustration with learning languages is the absence of layman's definitions of grammar. Ian —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ir5ac (talk • contribs) 08:31, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I fixed some stuff in the section on Finnish. The parts about having things ("onko teillä kirjat?") mistakenly referred to the accusative case, even though in the possessive constructs in Finnish, the thing being possessed is in the nominative, because it is actually the grammatical subject of the sentence. --Zet 08:16, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

In English language, it's a bit unusual to use "to contain" for food or the like. You would rather say "there is milk in the glass" than "the glass contains milk". However, in scientific use I would prefer contain. "As you can see, the glass contains a viscous liquid, whose surface tension will halve once we add some acid to it ..." -andy 92.229.65.206 (talk) 03:57, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

No one know anything about the Estonian partitive case that they can add? 125.239.103.113 (talk) 11:17, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

There is some badly translated finnish in this article and it does not really deliver the idea behind partitive. In any case, partitive not "any", but refers to (often unidentified) existing group and defines itself as subgroup. Best description I can come up is that partitive is like making word into quantative word where it usually does not exist, for example using "car" instead of "a car", thus referring to an unidentified subgroup of "all cars". It defines "car" as a subgroup of "all cars", but does not tell it's exact nature, ie. which subgroup it is. Even if actual subgroup is often undefined, group that subgroup is part of is identified even if indirectly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.1.30.118 (talk) 08:54, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

># For atelic actions (possibly incomplete) and ongoing processes: "luen kirjaa" -> "I'm reading a book" It's not a book that is being read, but (unidenfied) part of the book.

* Compare with telic actions in accusative case: "luen kirjan" -> "I will read the (entire) book" It's not "the book", but rather unknown book, but this unknown book is read entirely.

This house refers to part of the house, which is unidentified. It can be, for example, spatially complete but in some temporal way limited.
 * 1) With atelic verbs, particularly those indicating emotions: "rakastan tätä taloa" -> "I love this house"

It's not "the book", it's a book, but refers to a member of group "books", and that particular group of books is (somehow, by context) limited. This is closest we get to english with partitive. It's milk without some.
 * 1) For tentative enquiries: "saanko lainata kirjaa?" -> "can I borrow the book?"
 * 1) For uncountables: "lasissa on maitoa" -> "there is (some) milk in the glass"

There is no any in this finnish sentence, it's "do you have books?".
 * 1) In places where English would use "some" or "any": "onko teillä kirjoja?" -> "do you have any books?"

* Compare with nominative case: "onko teillä kirjat?" -> "do you have the (specific) books?" "Do you have books?" where books are specified by a context, at least in mind of one who asks.

"There's no book in house".
 * 1) For negative statements: "talossa ei ole kirjaa" -> "in the house, [there] is not [a] book"

NOT everything translates to english. And some things that do, translates grammatically "wrong". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.1.30.118 (talk) 09:05, 8 April 2010 (UTC)