partitive

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par·ti·tive

(pär′tĭ-tĭv)
adj.
1. Dividing or serving to divide something into parts; marked by division.
2. Grammar Indicating a part as distinct from a whole, as some of the coffee in the sentence She drank some of the coffee.
n. Grammar
1. A partitive word, such as many or less.
2. A partitive construction or case.
[Middle English, from Old French partitif, from Medieval Latin partītīvus, from Latin partītus, past participle of partīre, to divide; see partite.]
par′ti·tive·ly adv.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

partitive

(ˈpɑːtɪtɪv)
adj
1. (Grammar) grammar indicating that a noun involved in a construction refers only to a part or fraction of what it otherwise refers to. The phrase some of the butter is a partitive construction; in some inflected languages it would be translated by the genitive case of the noun
2. serving to separate or divide into parts
n
(Grammar) grammar a partitive linguistic element or feature
[C16: from Medieval Latin partītīvus serving to divide, from Latin partīre to divide]
ˈpartitively adv
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

par•ti•tive

(ˈpɑr tɪ tɪv)

adj.
1. serving to divide into parts.
2. (of a word, construction, or grammatical case) indicating a part or quantity of a whole.
n.
3. a partitive word, case, or construction, as a slice of cake or the word some.
[1510–20; < Medieval Latin partītīvus divisive = Latin partīt(us), past participle of partīrī to divide (see party) + -īvus -ive]
par′ti•tive•ly, adv.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Noun 1. partitive - word (such a `some' or `less') that is used to indicate a part as distinct from a whole
word - a unit of language that native speakers can identify; "words are the blocks from which sentences are made"; "he hardly said ten words all morning"
Adj. 1. partitive - (Romance languages) relating to or denoting a part of a whole or a quantity that is less than the whole; "a partitive construction"
2. partitive - indicating or characterized by or serving to create partition or division into parts; "partitive tendencies in education"
3. partitive - serving to separate or divide into parts; "partitive tendencies in education"; "the uniting influence was stronger than the separative"
disjunctive - serving or tending to divide or separate
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
Translations

partitive

[ˈpɑːtɪtɪv] ADJ → partitivo
Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

partitive

adj (Gram) → partitiv
Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

partitive

[ˈpɑːtɪtɪv]
1. adj → partitivo/a
2. n → partitivo
Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995
References in periodicals archive ?
Section 3 presents a study into the properties of partitive and elative case-marking in the partitive constructions and the nature of true partitives and pseudopartitives.
This article concerns only semantic partitives, more specifically, pseudopartitives.
True partitives refer to a part/subset of a (definite) superset (e.g., a hot cup of this green tea, a large package of this Danish butter, a small box ofthese chocolates) (cf.
Most semantic approaches, however, would classify partitives as indefinite.
This is clearly seen with partitives like those in (7), which include an embedded definite DP, while the embedding DP is not semantically definite.
In Cindy Sherman's enacted portraiture or Yasumasa Morimura's intercessions in the genre or Byron Kim's use of partitives for the human visage, we see our culture parsing encumbered sign systems of the past into smaller, more intimate integers of intellect and emotion.
Gianni Versace
* Add partitives, like to or have, to help the reader grasp where he is, or to (N.B.) add emphasis, as in "I come here to swim, to play, and to have fun."
Chopping copy
As a class, second declension nouns lack fusional short illatives and stem partitives (though individual items may retain old short illatives, as in the case of MAA 'land', which preserves the short illative maha).
The pivotal role of these 'principal parts' is recognized in traditional descriptions, which tend to distinguish three basic forms: the nominative, genitive and partitive singular (though the class of many nouns can be identified from the genitive or partitive singular alone).
Turning to the syntactic points that Lenchuk and Ahmed bring up, they first attack the claim that determinatives can participate in the partitive construction as defined in Reynolds (2013).
Determinatives again: a response to Lenchuk and Ahmed
The second aims to show that less and its ancestors are heads of a partitive construction, whether this is marked overtly or not.
The OED takes the Old English (OE) overtly partitive construction in (9) to be the ancestor of the stigmatised use of less illustrated by (1) in the previous note:

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