Editing Partitive (section)

==Partitive constructions==
The partitive nominal construction consists of structure ''[DP Det. + of + [DP Det. + NP]]'', as shown in 10a).

 10. a) Three of John’s friends.
     b) Three friends of John’s.

A related construction traditionally called the double genitive has been argued by Barker to actually be a partitive, which he terms the possessive partitive (shown in 10b), rather than simply a redundant application of the genitive marker ‘s.

Barker claims that this is a use of the partitive "of", rather than the gentitive ‘of’, distinguishing it from being a gentitive construction.  To support this, he notes that prenominal possessives such as "Mary’s child" cannot occur with a following possessor introduced by the genitive "of" such as, "Mary’s child of<sub>GEN</sub> John".  This phrase is illogical, since nominals are syntactically constrained to only allow one possessor.  Yet, prenominal [[possessive]]s can be combined with possessive partitives, containing the partitive "of", such as "my favorite story of<sub>PART</sub> yours".  This phrase is grammatical, taking the meaning "my favourite story out of your stories".

 11. a) a picture of John
     b) a picture of John's

Similarly, 11a) does not mean the same as 11b).  The first is an instance of the genitive "of", and means that John is in the picture.  The second is an instance of the partitive "of", and hence is a possessive partitive; in contrast, it means a picture from the collection of pictures that belong to John, but does not say anything about whether John is in the picture.

 12. a) a friend of John's
     b) a friend of John's friend

Nor do 12a) and 12b) mean the same.  The first is a possessive partitive, referring to someone who is a member of the set of John’s friends.  The second includes a postnominal genitive "of" phrase, and refers instead to someone who is a friend in relation to a member of the set of John’s friends, but not necessarily to John himself.

 13. a) three friends<sub>i</sub> of [John’s friends<sub>i</sub>]
     b) three [e<sub>i</sub>] of [John’s friends<sub>i</sub>]
     c) three friends<sub>i</sub> of [John’s [e<sub>i</sub>]]

The difference between the nominal partitive and the partitive possessive constructions may in fact be a matter of ellipsis in the phonetic forms, as suggested by Zamparelli.

He proposes that the two constructions have the same logical form, for example 13a), where the word friend has the same referent in both positions.  Variations then arise in the phonetic form depending on which "friend" word is ellipsed.  In the nominal partitive, the first "friend" is ellipsed, becoming 13b), whereas the possessive partitive ellipses the second instance of "friend", yielding 13c).<ref>Zamparelli, R. (1998). A Theory of Kinds, Partitives and of/z Possessives. Possessors, Predicates, and Movement in the Determiner Phrase, 22, 259.</ref>