kooliaastat

Kooliaastat is the partitive singular form of the Estonian noun kooliaasta, which translates to "school year." It occurs when the noun is used in a partitive sense, typically to indicate an indefinite quantity or to follow numerals expressing a non-specific amount. In practice, Estonian often uses the partitive after numerals such as two, three, or four, yielding kooliaastat for phrases like “two school years” or “three school years.” The form is commonly found in standard Estonian grammar, dictionaries, and academic discussions of morphology.

The form kooliaastat is produced by taking the base kooliaasta and applying the conventional Estonian partitive singular ending -t. This makes it one of the inflected forms of kooliaasta, a compound noun built from kooli (school) and aasta (year). The existence of this form illustrates how Estonian grammar handles case and number in conjunction with numerals to shape noun endings.

Usage-wise, kooliaastat appears in linguistic descriptions of Estonian morphology and in examples that demonstrate the partitive case after numerals. It is not a separate lexical item with an independent meaning beyond identifying the partitive form of kooliaasta, but it serves as an important example of how Estonian encodes quantity and indefiniteness in noun inflection. See also kooliaasta and Estonian grammar.