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Semantic Structure

When talking about the semantics of partitive, what is focused on is the function of partitives in relation to NPs and in some languages, also verbs, as well as how partitives are “paired” with words.

In English, the preposition “of” is a major way of presenting partitive of a NP. The early partitive construction proposed by Jackendoof, requires embedded NP to be definite. It must contain a definite article, a demonstrative or a possessive.

Partitive Constraint: In an of-N’’’ construction interpreted as a partitive, the N’’’ must have a demonstrative or a genitive specifier.

In 1996, de Hoop proposed that the NP being definite or indefinite does not play such a big role in partitive. The determining factor is there are two types of partitives given the difference in semantic functions: entity partitive and set partitive. NPs that can denote entities are allowed in entity partitives, whereas NPs that can denote sets of entities are allowed in set partitives. NPs that can only denote generalized quantifiers are not allowed in ordinary partitives.

Partitive Constraint (modified): Only NPs that can denote entities are allowed in entity partitives; only NPs that can denote sets of entities are allowed in set of partitives.

For example

(1)     	a. *one of a cookie
 * b. half of a cookie

(2)     	a. *one of the water
 * b. half of the water

(2a) is ungrammatical even though it has a definite article is because the denoted entity does not match. “the water” denotes sets of entities, and “one” is an entity partitive. As for (1b) being correct, is because indefinite and definite singular count nouns denotes entities instead of a singular entity, therefore it is grammatical when proceeded by “half of,” a set partitive.

In some languages such as Finnish, partitive’s function is not only NP-related, but can also be verb related. In NP-related function, partitive case is assigned to quantitatively indeterminate NPs, which includes indefinite bare plurals and mass nouns. When talking about verbal function related, what is focused on is the partitive’s aspectual function, assigned to the objects of verbs that denote an unbounded event.

Unboundness in verbs denotes whether there is a direct consequence following the action of the verb. For example, “shoot” is an intrinsically unbound verb, where the shooting can result in the target being shot, or the shooting missed the target. “Kill” is an intrinsically bound verb, where the consequence is someone/something being dead.

The common factor between aspectual and NP-related functions of partitive case is marking a VP’s unboundness. A VP has the semantic property of having either an unbounded head or unbounded argument. For example, in Finnish the partitive case suffix denotes an unbound event, while the accusative case suffix denotes a bounded event. Note that when translating Finnish into English, the determiners would surface as the partitives “a”, “the”, “some” or numerals in both unbound and bound events.

a.      Ammu-i-n karhu-a / kah-t a karhu-a / karhu-j-a
 * ‘I shot at the (a) bear/at (the) two   bears/at (the) bears’
 * The morpheme –a is the partitive morpheme

b.     Ammu – i-n karhu-n / kaksi karhu-a / karhu-t
 * ‘I shot the (a) bear / two bears / the bears

In (a), the verb ‘shot’ takes a partitive object and denotes the activity “to shoot at”, and in (b), the verb takes an accusative object and denotes accomplishment. Hence, the difference of unboundness is noted by the difference where the “bear” was not necessary hit by the shot in (a), whereas the bear was shot in (b).

As for presenting the NP-related function of partitive case in Finnish, the objects of an intrinsically bounded verb takes partitive when they are quantitatively indeterminate, especially when they are indefinite bare plurals or mass nouns. Otherwise, NP takes the accusative case.