Fwd: Re: zero-marked true partitives

[Paul Hopper]

I agree with Frans that there's no reason not to think of these pseudo-partitives as classifiers. Somewhere, too, English container nouns with full/-ful (Longman Grammar 253-4) must come in here (my examples):

two cups full of nails
two cupfuls of nails

In the latter no "cup" has to be present, and the grammaticalization of the classifier is quite transparent, cf. the verb agreement in:

a cupful of nails were scattered over the workbench
(vs. a cup full of nails stands on the workbench)

the lack of number in the container word, and the pronominal use in:

I asked for some nails and they gave me a cupful in a bag. 

Inalienables like "armful", "fistful", "handful" are only used in the classifier type. It's interesting too that figurative/exaggerated uses are common, like "a thimbleful of", "a bellyful of". These developments are typical of the way classifiers are grammaticalized out of nouns.

- Paul



> same goes for German:
> 
> PSEUDO:	fuenf Kilo/*Kilos Kartoffel REAL:		fuenf Kilo/Kilos von den
> Kartoffeln
> 
> Note the obligatory inflectional inertness of the quantifying-unit word in
> the first construction -- which suggests (to me) that the 
> "pseudo-partitive" construction is a classifier construction. Perhaps
> David has kept the correspondence some of us once had on this.
> 
> I've not checked, but I do believe German grammars mention this sort of
> thing.
> 
> Frans
> 
> 
>> 
>> Date:         Sun, 22 Jul 2007 22:16:54 +0100 Reply-To: Nigel Vincent
>> <nigel.vincent at MANCHESTER.AC.UK> Sender: Discussion List for ALT
>> <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG> From: Nigel Vincent
>> <nigel.vincent at MANCHESTER.AC.UK> Subject: Re: zero-marked true
>> partitives Comments: To: Michael Noonan <noonan at CSD.UWM.EDU> To:
>> LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>> 
>> How about Danish: fem kilo kartofler 'five kilos of potatoes' but fem kilo
>> af de kartofler 'five kilos of those potatoes' (Examples courtesy of my
>> native speaking wife and daughter but see Robin Allan, Philip Holmes &
>> Tom Lundskaer-Nielsen 'Danish. A Comprehensive Grammar', London,
>> Routledge, 1995, para 732 (e) for recognition of the different types of 
>> partitive.) In fact in my experience, partitives in pedagogically
>> oriented reference grammars aimed at an English speaking readership such
>> as the above get quite a lot of space - see also for example Martin
>> Maiden & Cecilia Robustelli 'A reference grammar of modern Italian',
>> London, Edward Arnold, 2000, pp. 76-9. I suspect this is because of the
>> fairly subtle differences in constructions with and without the use of
>> the preposition corresponding to 'of' in what is a pretty common type of
>> expression and one where Anglophone learners tend to make mistakes. In
>> other words, the tendency Mickey notes is probably characteristic of
>> grammars of a certain kind and not by any means of all grammars. Nigel
>> 
>> Quoting Michael Noonan <noonan at csd.uwm.edu>:
>> 
>>> A few years ago, Masha Koptjevskaja-Tamm made a useful distinction
>>> between 'pseudo-partitives' and 'true partitives'.
>>> 
>>> PSEUDO-PARTITIVE a kilo of tea
>>> 
>>> TRUE PARTITIVE a kilo of that tea
>>> 
>>> Pseudo-partitives are units of measure, but true partitives are parts
>>> of things.  Some languages, like English, deal with the two sorts of 
>>> partitives the same way; some languages have different means of
>>> expressing the two relationships.
>>> 
>>> My question concerns languages that have zero-marked
>>> pseudo-partitives, as in Chantyal:
>>> 
>>> dwita kilo cHa two   kilo tea 'two kilos of tea'
>>> 
>>> Zero-marked pseudo-partitives involve simple juxtaposition of the
>>> measure noun and the partitive NP.  In my limited sample, languages
>>> that have zero-marked pseudo-partitives lack a true partitive,
>>> expressing the idea clausally rather than within a noun phrase.  So,
>>> instead of a construction like
>>> 
>>> I want two kilos of that tea.
>>> 
>>> one would say something like:
>>> 
>>> That tea [topic], I want two kilos.
>>> 
>>> Does anyone have any counterexamples; that is, does anyone know of a 
>>> language that has zero-marked pseudo-partitive that also has a true 
>>> partitive formed other than clausally?
>>> 
>>> Thanks.  Grammars seldom note partitives of either sort, and true 
>>> partitives almost never.
>>> 
>>> Mickey
>>> 
>>> Michael Noonan Professor of Linguistics Dept. of English University of
>>> Wisconsin Milwaukee, WI  53201 USA
>>> 
>>> Office:	  414-229-4539 Fax:	  414-229-2643 Messages: 414-229-4511 
>>> Webpage:  http://www.uwm.edu/~noonan
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA Associate Vice-President for Graduate
>> Education
>> 
>> 
>> Mailing address:     School of Languages, Linguistics & Cultures 
>> University of Manchester Manchester M13 9PL United Kingdom
>> 
>> Tel (direct):        +44-(0)-161-275-3194 Fax:
>> +44-(0)-161-275-3031
> 
>