Search results for "partitive"
showing 4 items of 4 documents
The Use of Partitive Plural Predicatives by Learners of Finnish from Related and Non-related L1 Backgrounds: The same side of a slightly different co…
2014
The use of the partitive case, a typical case characterizing Finnic languages, remains a constant struggle for learners of Finnish as a foreign language. This paper reports on a study on the (under)use of partitive plural predicatives in the writings of Estonian, German and Dutch learners of Finnish as a foreign language. The overall aim of the study reported on in this paper was to identify and address similarities and differences between the use of partitive plural predicatives by learners of Finnish as a foreign language from related and non-related L1 backgrounds (Estonian vs. German/Dutch). Research materials (Estonian learner corpus 82,749 words; German learner corpus 60,490 words; Du…
Subject case alternation in Latvian and Estonian existential clauses
2019
In Latvian and Estonian existential clauses, the subject’s case form alternates between nominative vs. genitive (in Latvian) and nominative vs. partitive (in Estonian). This article is a study of the case-alternation systems of existential clauses and related clause types, locative and possessive clauses in these languages. It includes a corpusbased analysis of Latvian existential clauses that is being compared with Estonian corpus-based findings on similar clause types in Estonian. *** Subjekti kaandevaheldus lati ja eesti keele eksistentsiaallausetes Nii eesti kui ka lati keeles esineb subjekti kaandevaheldust. Lati keeles saab subjekt olla lisaks nominatiivile ka genitiivis, eesti keeles…
The Independent Partitive as an Eastern Circum-Baltic isogloss
2015
The paper claims that the independent partitive case in Finnic languages and the independent partitive genitive case in Baltic and East Slavic (henceforth: ip(g)) show considerable correlations that cannot be accounted for but by language contact. Given that both the ip(g) in Baltic and East Slavic as well as the ip(g) in Finnic are inherited from the respective proto-languages, the paper also offers a methodological discussion of how inherited categories may also be shown to be subject to language contact. A typologically not infrequent category must be individualized on the basis of a list of properties. Thus, 13 semantic and 5 morphosyntactic properties have been discussed. While the stu…
The article a(n) in English quantifying expressions: A default marker of cardinality
2020
Certain English quantificational expressions feature what appears to be an indefinite article, e.g. 'a bunch, a few, a hundred'. These can be divided into three types of quantifying expressions: pseudopartitives ('a lot, a bunch, a ton'), article-requiring quantifiers ('a few, a couple, a hundred'), and article-free quantifiers ('three, many, several'); article-free quantifiers have an article under certain circumstances, e.g. modification by an adjective ('a surprising 30 …'). While standard analyses would take the article in these expressions to be a D head, it is argued here that the article is not in D, nor is it singular or count, as evidenced by its (lack of an) interaction with verba…