Interestingly the English indefinite article 'a/an' is often used
when translating the Finnish partitive case, though.
Hän ajo autoa = He drove a car.
Hän = He - nomnitive
ajo = drove
autoa = a car - partitive (any of the millions of cars)
Hän ajo auton ojaan = He drove the car into the ditch.
auton = the car - accusative (the complete car)
ojaan = into the ditch - inessive case.
If a Finn said:
Hän ajo autoa ojaan = He was driving a car into the ditch.
The partitive case not only makes the noun indefinite but also makes
the action incomplete.
I suppose an IE list should concern itself less with Uralic, so let
me try to tie Uralic to PIE and ask about Sanskrit 'ajati' he drives,
Latin 'ago/agere' to urge, drive, plead. FU *aj to drive, lead,
chase, Finn. 'ajaa' he drives. It looks as if the FU and PIE roots
are cognates. Are there any opinions whether this word goes further
back than PIE or was it borrowed into FU?
Peter
--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "aquila_grande" <aquila_grande@...>
wrote:
>
> The use of partitive in objects may imply an indefinite number of
> things or indefinite amount of something, but more often it implies
> that the action upon the object is regarded as imperfective. It
never
> implies the same thing as for example the english indefinite
article.
>
> The object of a negative sentence is always constructed with
> partitive.
>
> There is also a certain degree of ergativity in this construction.
> The subject of an intransitive verb can be constructed with the
> partitive in the same circumstances. The subject of a transitive
verb
> is allways in nominative (that here acts as an ergative).
>
>
>
> An interesting question is weather both the Uralic
ablative/partitive
> and the Indo-european genitive ending and the use of the genitive
> derives from a nostratic (or steppe?) old ablative (or postposition
> with that function).
>