Editing Partitive (section)

==Partitives and quantitatives==

A true partitive should be distinguished from a very similar construction called a quantitative (often called a ''pseudopartitive'', or sometimes a non-partitive).

[[File:Choco-partitive2.png|thumb|A syntactic tree structure of an English partitive shown in (5a). The structure consists of two noun projections (''box'' and ''chocolates'').<ref name="Stickney">Adapted from Stickney, H. (2007). From pseudopartitive to partitive. In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA), Somerville, MA (pp. 407). http://www.lingref.com/cpp/galana/2/paper1580.pdf</ref>]]

[[File:Choco-pseudo2.png|thumb|A tree structure for an English quantitative (also called pseudo-partitive) in (5b). The most embedded N (''chocolates'') projects to FP (Functional Phrase) and "of" is a functional element (F) heading FP. FP then projects to QP (Quantitative Phrase) and Q (''box'') denotes a quantifier <ref name=Stickney />]]

 5. a) A box of those chocolates
    b) A box of chocolates

 6. a) *The three of those cars
    b) The three cars

A true partitive, as shown in 5a), has the interpretation of a quantity being a part or subset of an entity or set.  Quantitives, simply denote either a quantity of something or the number of members in a set, and contain a few important differences in relation to true partitives.

First off, while partitives cannot be preceded by a definite determiner, such as in 6a), quantitatives can be; 6b) is a well-formed quantitive.

While the NP in partitives is usually preceded by a definite determiner, the NP in quantitive constructions containing "of" cannot be preceded by any determiner; this distinguishes the true partitive in 5a) from the quantitative in 5b), which denotes a quantity of chocolates, but does not denote a smaller quantity of chocolates taken from a larger quantity of chocolates, as 5a) does.<ref name="barker" />

Quantitives can be interpreted as partitives, though, when modified.  Consider the example, "three children in the class"; this means "three children out of the children that are in the class", which has a partitive meaning.<ref>Stickney, H. (2007). From pseudopartitive to partitive. In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA), Somerville, MA (pp. 406-415).</ref>

One point which is important in distinguishing between partitives and pseudopartitives in English is a separation between two semantically different "of"s.  The first is a [[genitive]] "of", which indicates a kind-of or type-of relation demonstrated in the phrase "a book of history", in which "of" is used to modify the kind of book denoted, alternatively phrased as the compound noun "a history book".  Similarly, "a piece of chocolate" can be analyzed as a certain kind of piece, namely a chocolate piece.  The second is a partitive "of", which indicates a part-of relation and means "out of the total number of" in the case of set partitives.  A partitive like "a piece of this chocolate" does not refer to any chocolate piece, but a piece taken from the whole of a certain chocolate.<ref name="barker" />
	
Although the syntactic distribution of partitives and pseudo-partitives seems to be complementary, cross-linguistic data suggests this is not always true. Non-partitives can display an identical syntactic structure as true partitives and the ultimate difference is a semantic one. Vos pointed out that [[Dutch language|Dutch]] contains nominals fulfilling the syntactic criterion but lacking a partitive interpretation; they are therefore classified as non-partitives.<ref name=Vos />

{{interlinear|number= a)
|een paar van die<sub>w</sub> grappige voorbeelden|c1= → '''Non-partitive'''
|a couple of those funny examples
|"a couple of these(such) funny examples"}}

{{interlinear|number= b)
|een paar van die<sub>s</sub> grappige voorbeelden|c1= → '''Partitive'''
|a couple of those funny examples 
|"a couple of these funny examples"}}

The first [[Dutch language|Dutch]] phrase above is classified as a non-partitive. This is counter-intuitive at first glance because the phrase has a ''Det+of+Det+N'' sequence which is a consistent structure observed in partitives. A closer look at the [[Dutch language|Dutch]] data reveals that in denoting relativation and extraction relationships, non-partitives (or ''weak indirect partitive construction'' in Vos’s terminology) function as an adjectival modifier as opposed to ordinary partitives (''strong indirect partitive construction'') carrying a determiner-like element.<ref name=Vos />  Therefore, die<sub>w</sub> contains an adjectival meaning closer to 'such' and indicates funny examples of a certain ''type''. In the second example, die<sub>s</sub> is truly a definite determiner and is referring to a particular larger set of funny examples.