Some, most, and all of the partitives
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? Rhetorica Your Writing System Sucks
posts: 1292
, Kelatetía: Dis, Major Belt 1
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This started out as a yes-I-must-talk-about-this-now thread, but it occurs to me I have no idea what I'm doing, so instead of just soliciting feedback I'd like to invite others to share their partitive systems also.

Partitives in Lilitika


There are three categories of partitives in Lilitika:

(a) constructions where a set, general term exists; these are usually vague cases such as "some of the people" or "half of the night"
(b) constructions where a reference must be made to a specific quantity or fraction, e.g. "three of the walnuts" or "ten percent of the battery"
(c) constructions where a reference must be made to a subset which is distinguished by some attribute, e.g. "the wisest of the philosophers" or "the oldest (parts) of the tree"

(Jargon reminder: Lilitika has two major phases, "Archaic" and "Classical". "Ketalán" is a late dialect of the Classical form.)

Simple partitives


The first type is relatively boring: the dictionary simply contains a list of determiners (which, like many determiners in Lilitika, look like adjectives) that can be dropped in. For example: pensí means "partial." So, to say "some of us," all one need write is:

pensípartial sai1-PL.F.Ø

However, there is an exception: in Classical Lilitika, when it becomes commonplace to omit the subject pronoun (in favour of a more inflected verb), this retains an adjective form, not an adverb form as with many other words, e.g.

pensípartial égereiago-1.PL.PST
Some of us went.

This gets weird when using Ketalán's nominal-mimicking postfix adjectives:

égessingo-1.PL.PST pensapartial-F.Ø
Some of us went.

(which resembles a singular noun in the nominative case.)

Exact quantitative partitives


The second type is a little more erratic. Like many IE languages, Classical Lilitika falls back on a genitive in this case, but using the -úu numeral/counting noun suffix always spelled out in full:

si1.SG.GENkarsaifriend-F.PL.Ø lénúantwo-NUM-F.PL.GEN
Two of my friends.

However, Archaic Lilitika does something slightly scarier: it requires some kind of determiner (the, my, these, some, etc.) and places the count before that:

lénítwo-ADJ saní1-F.SG.GEN karsaifriend-F.PL.NOM
Two of my friends.

Qualitative partitives


These never changed from the archaic pattern of using word order:

zithuripurple-having si1.SG.GEN khríméahair-F.SG.Ø
My purple hair.
? hwhatting posts: 105
, Sophomore message
quoting Rhetorica, Illúbequía: Dis, Major Belt 1:

Qualitative partitives


These never changed from the archaic pattern of using word order:

zithuripurple-having si1.SG.GEN khríméahair-F.SG.Ø
My purple hair.

So this does this mean "the part of my hair that is purple"?
? Rhetorica Your Writing System Sucks
posts: 1292
, Kelatetía: Dis, Major Belt 1
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Yes, sorry. It came from an example in the Archaic grammar, before I really understood partitives.
? kusuri posts: 37
, Boson, Colololorado
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ProtoDec13 has a partitive paradigm built into the article prefixes, as a kind of number:

anparì/nnparì 'the coin'
janparì 'the coins'
hanparì 'some of the coin'
hjanparì 'some of the coins, some from each coin'
sanparì 'some of the coins, some coins from a group'


ḱińńiri nnparì 'the one coin'
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ḱińńiri hanparì 'some of that one coin'
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ḱińńiri sanparì 'one of the coins from the group'


-
nufuri janparì 'the eight coins'
-
nufuri hjanparì 'some of the eight coins'
nufuri sanparì 'eight coins from a group'


huuńairi angaltu 'the best carving'
huuńairi jangaltu 'the best carvings'
huuńairi hangaltu 'some of the best carving'
huuńairi hjangaltu 'some from each of the best carvings'
huuńairi sangaltu 'the best carving out of the group'

hiwwari arbiĺĺa 'purple hair; the part of the hair that is purple'
hiwwari jarbiĺĺa 'purple hairs; some heads of purple hair'
hiwwari harbiĺĺa 'some of some purple hair, some of a section of purple hair (on one head)'
hiwwari hjarbiĺĺa 'some of some purple hair (on each head)'
hiwwari sarbiĺĺa 'purple heads of hair (in a group with non-purple heads of hair)'

hiwwari anbiĺĺa nihipi 'my purple hair'
ĺurbùri arbiĺĺa 'a lot of hair' [much-ADJ IND-hair]
hiwwari arbiĺĺa ĺurbùm 'a lot of purple hair' [purple-ADJ IND-hair much-GEN]
etc.