zero-marked true partitives

[David Gil]

Quoting Maria Koptjevskaja Tamm <tamm at ling.su.se>:

> What David writes goes in fact against one of my
> generalizations that languages with zero-marked pseudo-partitives will ALWAYS
> have another construction for true partitives.

I'm not entirely sure that it does; much depends on the exact wording  
of the generalization.  I should add that in addition to the  
zero-marked option for pseudo- and true partitives in examples (1) and  
(2) from my previous posting, Riau Indonesian also allows use of  
_dari_ 'from' with true but not pseudo-partitives, as in:

(1') Aku mau satu kilogram dari teh
      1SG want one kilo from tea

Unlike (1) without _dari_, sentence (1') with _dari_ 'from' cannot  
mean 'I want a kilo of tea', but only 'I want a kilo of this/that/some  
specific tea'.  And like (1) under the true partitive interpretation,  
it would be better if _teh_ were further modified with some additional  
marker of deixis, but in an appropriate context is okay as is.


David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-3550321
Fax: 49-341-3550119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage:  http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/




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