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As of June 2008, the article talks mainly of the partitive nature of a noun phrase - which is fine, but confusing (eg. talking about the genitive in Russian and highlighting the word "wine" in "a glass of wine").

The fact is that the partitive (OED: "indicating a part or quantity of something: 'some' or 'any' are partitives") is the word that precedes and that governs the genitive in Russian; it is the word "glass" in "a glass of wine".

I would correct this article myself explaining all the differences, but it's well complex, so not right now - if anyone else feels up to the task and wants to nip in ahead of me...be my guest! Nic. 62.176.111.68 (talk) 17:56, 19 June 2008 (UTC)Reply

This page's content will soon be updated using, not exclusively, the following sources:

Angelo, T. A. (1987). What's a bunch?: integrating and applying syntactic, semantic, and sociolinguistic analyses to explain the partitive construction in English (Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education).

Barker, C. (1998). Partitives, double genitives and anti-uniqueness. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 16(4), 679-717.

de Hoop, H. (1997). A semantic reanalysis of the partitive constraint. Lingua,103(2), 151-174.

Girbau, N. M. (2002). Partitives: one or two nouns?. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa, vol. 27 (2002), p. 45-58.

Hoeksema, J. (Ed.). (1996). Partitives: Studies on the syntax and semantics of partitive and related constructions (Vol. 14). Walter de Gruyter.

Kim, J. B. (2002). On the structure of English partitive NPs and agreement. Studies in Generative Grammar, 12, 309-338.

Kiparsky, P. (1998). Partitive case and aspect. The projection of arguments: Lexical and compositional factors, 265, 307.

Martí i Girbau, M. N. (2010). The syntax of partitives.

Vainikka, A., & Maling, J. (1996). Is partitive case inherent or structural. Partitives. Studies on the distribution and meaning of partitive expressions, 179-208.

Vos, H. M. (1999). A grammar of partitive constructions.

Zamparelli, R. (1998). A Theory of Kinds, Partitives and of/z Possessives. Possessors, Predicates, and Movement in the Determiner Phrase, 22, 259. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rachaelhannay (talk • contribs) 05:46, 15 October 2013 (UTC)Reply

Consider the common phrases of the form "The two of them" ("the [Q] of [Pron]"). Phrases such as example 6a may be only used in informal English, but they are common. The text doesn't allow for this class of exceptions to the purported universal ungrammaticality of phrases such as 6a.

Also, it is not hard to find examples such as "He was telling me more of the story of the two of the tribes that live in the bluffs above Box Butte Canyon." DCDuring (talk) 17:13, 28 September 2016 (UTC)Reply

From the article: In Latin, German and Russian, the partitive is expressed by the genitive case, sometimes called the partitive genitive.[2]

The article cited only discusses Russian. It says nothing about Latin or German. We need sources for Latin and German.

German uses the prepositional construction, just like all the other languages in the table: "drei von meinen Freunden" (three of my friends). German also has the construction "ein Glas des besten Wein" (a glass of the best wine), but I don't know if that can be considered a partitive. Omc (talk) 17:39, 20 July 2019 (UTC)Reply

An even more important construction that speakers of German use is a nominative + nominative construction. This can be seen in phrases like "Ein Glas bester Wein", "Eine Tasse grüner Tee".

A genitive partitive ("ein Glas des beten Weines", or "eine Tasse grünen Tees" are also possible. I also don't know if this can be considered partitive (especially the "ein Glas Wasser" construction). If anyone could clarify this please? Gelbgepunkteterpanter (talk) 15:56, 10 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

Near the beginning, we have: [_DP Det. + of + [_DP Det. + NP]]. Can we please briefly expand and explain these abbreviations in the text and provide links to articles that explain them more fully? "First determiner" is a good start but is insufficient. I would try to fix this myself, but at this point in my education, I am one of the befuddled persons who needs to follow those links. Thanks. Peter Chastain ^[¡hablá!] 20:35, 30 November 2019 (UTC)Reply