Partitive

The partitive can refer to several things:

• Partitive case
• partitive meaning of noun phrases

The partitive refers to the selection of a part/quantity out of a group/amount. It is used for example in Estonian (the third case), in Latin, German and Russian, expressed by the genitive case, and in French, expressed with the preposition de (and its contracted forms). It must be noted that the literal translation of the French "de" would rather be "out of", because something is taken out of or from a larger a amount of countable things. The English "of", however, can also denote a standalone amount:

There is a tray on the table with 500 grams of oranges on it. (this is not a partitive, because there is no superset)

Examples (with the partitive marked in italics):

• many of my friends
• the youngest of the children
• a glass of wine.

Example in French:

• Elle achetait 500 grammes des tomates au marché.

("She bought 500 grams of [literally: "out of the"] tomatoes on the market.")

Literally, this denotes that she had bought 500 grams of potatoes out of an amount of several kilograms available for sale. "Des" is a contraction of "de" and the unisex plural article "les". In German, one would say "500 Gramm Tomaten" without the use of a preposition, though.