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The partitive case (abbreviated , , or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical case which denotes "partialness", "without result", or "without specific identity". It is also used in contexts where a subgroup is selected from a larger group, or with numbers.
Where not mentioned, the accusative case would be ungrammatical. For example, the partitive must always be used after singular numerals.
As an example of the irresultative meaning of the partitive, ammuin karhun (accusative case) means "I shot the bear (dead)", whereas ammuin karhua (partitive) means "I shot (at) the bear" without specifying if it was even hit. Notice that Finnish has no native future tense, so that the partitive provides an important reference to the present as opposed to the future. Thus luen kirjaa means "I am reading a/the book" whereas luen kirjan means "I will read a/the book". Thus "luen" can mean "I read", "I am reading" or "I will read" depending on the case form of the word that follows. The partitive form kirjaa indicates incompleted action and hence the meaning of the verb form is present tense. The accusative form kirjan indicates completed action when used with the past tense verb but indicates planned future action when used with a verb in the present tense. Hence luen kirjan means "I will read the book".
The case with an unspecified identity is onko teillä kirjoja, which uses the partitive, because it refers to unspecified books, as contrasted to Nominative case onko teillä (ne) kirjat?, which means "do you have (those) books?"
The partitive case comes from the older ablative case. This meaning is preserved e.g. in kotoa (from home), takaa (from behind), where it means "from".
A Western Finnish dialectal phenomenon seen in some dialects is the assimilation of the final -a into a preceding vowel, thus making the chroneme the partitive marker. For example, suurii → suuria "some big --".
In Estonian, the system is generally similar. In Estonian grammatical tradition, the term "accusative" is not used, since like in Finnish, the total object form coincides with the genitive in the singular, and the nominative in the plural.
In many Estonian words, the difference between the full and partial object cases is only in vowel or consonant quantity (long vs overlong), which is not marked in writing, except for stop consonants. Thus, the distinction between a total and partial object may be apparent in speech but not in writing. For example, the sentence Linn ehitab kooli would mean "The city will build a/the school" when pronounced with a long vowel "o" in kooli "school (genitive case)", and "The city is building a/the school" with an overlong "o" (partitive case).
For many verbs in Estonian, an additional adverb is almost always added when a completed action is meant - for example, ma söön leiba "I'm eating bread", vs ma söön leiva ära "I will eat the (whole) bread". Since Estonian, unlike Finnish, has words where the genitive and partitive singular are identical even in pronunciation, this can provide disambiguation in those cases - e.g ma söön kala "I'm eating fish", vs ma söön kala ära "I will eat (all of) the fish".
The partitive case can also be used as a comparative:
If an adjective already ends in an alveolar fricative (like s in "suit"), the "-s" drops:
In modern Russian, use of the partitive case is often facultative. In many situations, the partitive and the genitive can be used almost synonymously: чашка ча ю, (partitive) and чашка ча я (genitive) both mean "a cup of tea"; много дым у, (partitive) and много дым а (genitive) both mean "lots of smoke". The partitive variant is preferred with verbs: выпить ча ю, , "to have a drink of tea". The genitive variant is used more frequently when the mass noun is modified by an adjective: чашка горячего ча я , "a cup of hot tea". (2025). 9785811224470, Airis Press. ISBN 9785811224470
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