Partitiivisena

Partitiivisena is a linguistic term used in Finnish grammar to denote the state or role of a word being in the partitive form. It is the essive form of the adjective partitiivinen, meaning “as partitive” or “in the partitive form.” The concept is mainly encountered in grammar descriptions, language teaching, and linguistic analyses, rather than in everyday speech.

In practice, partitiivisena is used to label how a word functions or is marked in a sentence when referring to the partitive case. The partitive in Finnish expresses incomplete action, partial quantity, or indefiniteness, and it arises in various syntactic contexts after certain verbs, negation, or with plural nouns. The phrase partitiivisena helps educators and grammarians discuss or annotate forms without quoting a specific morpheme.

Examples in educational or descriptive contexts might look like: “Sana 'kirjaa' on partitiivisena muotona,” meaning the word is in the partitive form. The exact interpretation depends on context, but the general idea is that the form is used to convey partitivity rather than nominative or other cases.

The usage of partitiivisena is therefore largely confined to theoretical, pedagogical, or corpus-annotation settings. In ordinary spoken Finnish, speakers refer to the partitive by citing the actual case form rather than by using the label partitiivisena.

See also: partitiivi, partitiivinen, essive.