partitivedeclarative

Partitivedeclarative is a term encountered in some linguistic discussions to describe a proposed interface between partitive semantics and the declarative mood of a clause. In this view, a declarative sentence encodes information about only a portion of a referent, rather than about the whole.

In theoretical accounts, a partitivedeclarative clause would combine a partitive element in the noun phrase—such as a partitive determiner or case marking—with the standard declarative predicate. The result is a proposition that asserts partiality or a partial subset of a whole, while maintaining the ordinary truth-conditional shape of a declarative sentence.

Typologically, partitivedeclarative constructions are discussed mainly for languages that have productive partitive morphology or explicit part-whole marking within noun phrases. The proposal focuses on how such marking interacts with the clause’s mood and with quantificational semantics, potentially encoding partiality through morphology, determiner choice, or case.

Relation to other concepts: partitivedeclarative is distinct from ordinary declaratives that refer to totalities, and from other partially quantifying constructions like distributive or mass–count patterns. It is also contrasted with interrogative or imperative moods that may express partial information but do so with different syntactic or prosodic means.

Example and usage: English typically conveys partiality with determiner plus noun phrases, as in some of the cookies are on the plate. A true partitivedeclarative, in theories that posit dedicated morphology, would involve a distinct grammatical marking within the clause to signal partiality beyond standard English usage. The term is not uniformly standardized and appears mainly in theoretical discussions or field-specific literature.

See also: partitive case, partitive determiner, distributive quantification, mass–count grammar.