Editing Partitive (section)

==Anti-uniqueness==

Barker claims that partitives are ''anti-unique''; that is, a partitive cannot refer to a unique individual or set of individuals, but must have at least two individuals or sets of individuals in its [[Extension (semantics)|extension]], causing a degree of indefiniteness.<ref name="barker">Barker, C. (1998). Partitives, double genitives and anti-uniqueness. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 16(4), 679-717.</ref>

In addition, he limits a partitive to being only able to refer to a proper subset, which he calls ''proper partitivity''.  This means that, for example, in the partitive phrase "one of John’s friends", that John must have at least two friends for this to be a proper partitive, and in order for it to satisfy anti-uniqueness by not referring to a unique individual.  Similarly, "three of John’s friends" would imply that John has at least four friends, from which an indeterminate three are being referred to.

 4. a) I met [one of John's friends].
    b) *I met the [one of John's friends].
    c) I met the [one of John’s friends] that you pointed out this morning.

Furthermore, Barker states that DP partitive constructions cannot be headed by a definite determiner without being modified by a [[relative clause]], that there is some inherent indefiniteness in partitives according to their property of anti-uniqueness.<ref name="barker" />  This explains why 4b) is ill-formed, since it is unclear which of John’s friends is being singled out, yet can be made to take a definite determiner by adding context, such as in 4c), which now refers to a single specific friend of John matching the [[Modifier (linguistics)|modifier]] clause.