The Finnish partitive in counting and measuring constructions1 Peter R. SUTTON — Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf Carol-Rose LITTLE — Cornell University Abstract. This paper proposes a compositional semantic analysis for the use of the partitive case in counting and measuring constructions in Finnish. Count nouns in counting construc- tions are partitive singular but partitive plural in measure constructions. Mass nouns are infelic- itous in counting constructions but are partitive singular in measure constructions. We propose an analysis for this pattern by making the semantics of the partitive morpheme both (i) derived from the notion of mereological parthood and (ii) sensitive to quantization. Finally, we show how this analysis extends to account for why mass nouns and plural count nouns in partitive case are felicitous as partitive subjects, when singular count nouns in partitive case are not. Keywords: Finnish, partitive case, mass/count, indefiniteness. 1. Introduction In this paper we propose an analysis for the Finnish partitive case in counting and measur- ing constructions. In (1a), we see that count nouns like ‘apple’ are in the partitive case after numerals. Mass nouns such as ‘rice’ in (1b) are infelicitous with numerals. In the measure construction in (2), mass and count nouns are both in the partitive case, as in (2a) and (2c), but the count noun additionally has the plural marker. Without the plural morpheme, the count noun is infelicitous in the measuring construction (2b).2 (1) a. kaksi omena-a b. #kaksi riisi-a¨ two apple-PART two rice-PART ‘two apples’ Intended: ‘two (portions/grains of) rice’ (2) a. kaksi kilo-a omeno-i-ta two kilo-PART apple-PL-PART ‘two kilos of apples’ b. #kaksi kilo-a omena-a two kilo-PART apple-PART Intended: ‘two kilos of apples’ c. kaksi kilo-a riisi-a¨ two kilo-PART rice-PART ‘two kilos of rice’ 1We would like to thank comments and discussion from audiences at Sinn und Bedeutung 24, SinFonIJA , TbiLLC 13 and the Potsdam University SynSem Colloquium. Thanks, also, to Eleni Gregoromichelaki and Malte Zim- mermann for helpful discussions. Unless otherwise cited, data comes from consultation with Finnish: An essen- tial Grammar (Karlsson, 2018) and native speakers, primarily from the Helsinki metropolitan area, particularly Markus Hippi, Silva Kirkkomaki¨ and Sami Kumpula (Kiitoksia!). Funding for the first author was from the DFG CRC 991 project The Structure of Representations in Language, Cognition, and Science, project C09, A frame- based analysis of countability. Funding support for the second author is possible thanks to the Cognitive Science Program at Cornell University. 2Abbreviatons: 1 = first person; 3 = third person; ADESS = adessive; ALLAT = allative; GEN = genitive; ELAT = elative; INESS = inessive; N = noun; PART = partitive; PL = plural; PST.P = past participle suffix; SG = singular. © 2020 Peter R. Sutton and Carol-Rose Little. In: M. Franke et al. (eds.) Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 24, vol. 2, pp.336–353. Osnabrück University. The Finnish partitive in counting and measuring constructions 337 The pattern in Finnish is surprising given the typology across other number marking languages. Usually count nouns are either plural in both counting and measuring constructions, as in En- glish in (3), or both singular as in Turkish in (4). (3) English a. two apples b. two kilos of apples (4) Turkish a. iki elma b. iki kilo elma two apple two kilo apple ‘two apples’ ‘two kilos of apples’ Finnish, on the other hand, employs different strategies for counting and measuring construc- tions. While omena-a ‘apple-PART’ is in the partitive singular in (1a), in measuring construc- tions, the count noun takes the partitive plural (2a). Mass nouns are infelicitous in counting constructions (1b) but in the partitive singular in measuring constructions (2c). This data presents a puzzle. On the assumption that nouns in counting constructions denote cumulative predicates, or single entities and sums thereof, omena-a (‘apple.SG-PART’) in (1) denotes a cumulative predicate, even though it is singular. Measure phrases, such as kilo- a ‘kilo-PART’ in (2), select for cumulative predicates. Therefore, singular nouns in partitive case in Finnish should be felicitous in measure constructions because they denote cumulative predicates—but they are not. In this paper, we propose a compositional semantic analysis for the singular and plural partitive constructions in Finnish in (1-2). We argue that each morpheme contributes to the semantic interpretation, in contrast to Ionin and Matushansky (2004) and Ionin et al. (2006) who assume PL morphology is semantically vacuous. We propose a solution to this puzzle that analyses the Finnish partitive as semantically sensitive to both the semantic type of the nominal predicate it applies to and to whether or not type he;ti predicates are quantized (QUA) in the sense of Krifka (1989). The goal of this paper is therefore to account for the distribution of the partitive singular and plural in counting and measuring constructions (1) and (2), namely: (i) count nouns in count- ing constructions are partitive singular but partitive plural in measure constructions; and (ii) mass nouns are infelicitous in counting constructions but are partitive singular in measure con- structions. We do this by making the semantics of the partitive morpheme both (i) derived from the notion of mereological parthood; and at the same time (ii) sensitive to quantization. Bare singular count nouns denote quantized predicates, mass nouns and plural count nouns denote non-quantized predicates. We argue that the partitive morpheme is polysemous and is interpreted with a different sense depending on whether the predicate it applies to is quantized. While previous accounts of the Finnish partitive include Kiparsky (1998), who focuses on the partitive and aspect, and Danon (2012), who takes a syntactic approach to counting construc- tions, these accounts do not obviously extend to measure constructions. To our knowledge, there is no compositional analysis of the partitive morpheme in Finnish that accounts for count- ing and measuring constructions. This paper is structured as follows. We first give background on the partitive case and provide 338 Peter R. Sutton and Carol-Rose Little evidence that Finnish has a grammaticalized mass/count distinction (x2). We then provide background on counting and measuring constructions crosslinguistically (x3) and show why this makes the Finnish data all the more puzzling. x4 briefly reviews some previous accounts of the Finnish partitive. In x5, we propose an analysis for the partitive in counting and measuring constructions. In x6, we show how our account also predicts a key distributional fact about partitive subjects. x7 concludes the paper. 2. Background on the partitive case and mass/count distinction in Finnish 2.1. The partitive case The partitive is a nominal case marker that roughly conveys a meaning related to parthood, nonspecificity, or something without result, and is common across Finnic languages. The parti- tive singular has three endings: -a/-a¨, -ta/-ta¨, or -tta/-tta¨, where the vowel of the partitive suffix assimilates to vowels in the root. The partitive plural is built by adding -i/ -j to the stem and then the partitive ending (Table 1). While there are other uses of the partitive, here we focus on counting and measuring constructions. Table 1: Finnish partitive singular and plural endings N Concept N.NOMINATIVE N-PARTITIVE N-PL-PARTITIVE apple omena omena-a omeno-i-ta language kieli kiel-ta¨ kiel-i-a¨ room huone huone-tta huone-i-ta ball pallo pallo-a pallo-j-a 2.2. Evidence for a mass/count distinction in Finnish Finnish has a lexicalized count/mass distinction, exhibited by the following contrasts with the quantifiers monta (5) and paljon (6) and the distributive determiner jokainen (7). For instance, the count noun pallo ‘ball’ is felicitous with the quantifier monta (5a), but the mass noun riisi ‘rice’ is not (5b). Similarly, the quantifier paljon is felicitous with count nouns like ihminen ‘person’ in the partitive plural but not singular (6a). Mass nouns are felicitous with paljon in the partitive singular but not plural (6b). (5) a. Kuinka monta pallo-a on laatiko-ssa? how many ball-PART be.3 box-INESS ‘How many balls are in the box?’ b. #Kuinka monta riisi-a¨ on pakkaukse-ssa? how many rice-PART be.3 package-INESS ‘#How many rice(s) is/are in the package?’ (6) a. Tuo-lla on paljon #ihmis-ta¨ / ihmis-i-a¨. that-ADESS be.3 a.lot.of person-PART / person-PL-PART ‘There is/are a lot of #person/people over there.’ b. Pakkaukse-ssa on paljon riisi-a¨ / #riise-j-a¨ package-INESS be.3 a.lot.of rice-PART / rice-PL-PART ‘There is/are a lot of rice/#rices in the package.’ The Finnish partitive in counting and measuring constructions 339 (7) a. Jokainen kultainen sormus maksa-a yli 200 euro-a. each golden ring cost-3 over 200 euro-PART ‘Each gold ring costs over 200 euros.’ b. #Jokainen kulta maksa-a yli 200 euro-a. each gold cost-3 over 200 euro-PART ‘#Each gold costs over 200 euros.’ We take the data in (5-7) as evidence for a mass/count distinction in Finnish. 3. The puzzle of Finnish counting and measuring constructions Given that one of the contrasts in the Finnish data that we are focussing on are counting con- structions such as (1a) and measuring constructions such as (2a,2c), one possible hypothesis to explain the distributional patterns of the Finnish partitive case and number morphology in such examples would be that they can be derived from syntactic and semantic differences between counting and measuring constructions that are witnessed cross-linguistically. Although we do not dispute that there are such differences, we argue that this hypothesis does not account for the Finnish data.