partive

Partitive is a term used in linguistics to describe a grammatical category that marks a non-total quantity, a part of a whole, or an indefinite amount. It can appear as a case, an article, or a suffix, depending on the language. The core idea is to indicate that the reference is not the entire set or object.

In French, the partitive is most visibly expressed through the partitive articles du, de la, de l’, and des. These forms accompany mass or uncountable nouns to mean “some” or “a portion of,” as in je voudrais du pain (I would like some bread) or il boit de l’eau (he drinks water). After negation, the partitive often changes to de or d’, as in je ne mange pas de pain.

In Italian, partitive meaning is conveyed with phrases like del, della, dei, delle, dello, used with nouns to express an unspecified portion of something, or quantities less than the whole, such as un po’ di pane or mangio del pane (I eat some bread).

Finnish uses a distinct partitive case, marked by noun inflections, to express incomplete action, ongoing states, or indefinite quantities. For example, the partitive is used with objects in phrases like syön leipää (I eat bread, in a sense of some bread rather than all of it) and interacts with verb aspects and negation.

The concept varies across languages and is not a feature of modern English grammar. In some languages, the partitive is a dedicated case; in others, it is expressed through articles or prepositional phrases.