zero-marked true partitives

Mon Jul 30 17:10:35 UTC 2007

Dear Paolo,
maybe that in German we have a larger number of such classifiers. 
However, in my German, these are rarely used. This morning, I asked my 
wife who was on her way driving into town in order to do some shopping: 
"Bringst du einen Salat mit?" It was clear to her that I had in mind 
"einen Kopf Salat", but I guess she would have been rather irritated if 
I had used this construction. Something the like seems to happen when 
you ask  the bar keeper: "Ich hätte gerne ein Bier". The overt variant 
"Ich hätte gern ein Glas Bier" would be rather marked (and, maybe 
affected).  Neverless, some 'classifyer-like' constructions seem to be 
partitive in nature, compare: Gib mir mal ein Stück Zeitung (said in 
order clean up some dirt) [alternatively, we have: Gib mir mal n Stück 
vonner Zeitung / here, I use Colloquial German]. By the way: 
Kartoffelsalat, Fischsalat etc. are - according to my opinion - not 
examples of classification, but simply compounds (I guess this is what 
you wanted to say). A 'Kopfsalat' falls into the same domain: A 
Kopfsalat differs from other kinds of 'Salat' because of its shape 
('Salat wie ein Kopf'). Hence, 'drei Kopf Kopfsalat' would theoretically 
(!) be possible...
Best wishes,
Wolfgang

Paolo Ramat wrote:
> Just a marginal note:
> I agree with Frans: The 'pseudo-partitive construction' is in fact a 
> classifier construction.
> you can't buy in the greengrocer shop "Einen Salat", but just "Einen 
> Kopf Salat", oder "Einen Kopfsalat", while in a restaurant you have to 
> specify what  kind of salad you want: "Kartoffelsalat, Oelsalat...." , 
> and even "Fleisch-" or "Fischsalat".
> The 'true partitive' would be "Bitte geben Sie mir zwei Koepfe von 
> diesem Salat".
>
> Ciao!
> Paolo
>

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*Prof. Dr. Wolfgang 
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