# French- origins of partitive article



## Beachxhair

I'm very curious about the origins of the French partitive construction, as partitive noun phrases demand the adverbial pronoun _en, _even though the noun phrases are semantically the direct object of the verb in many cases. (Eg. 'je mange des fraises', j'en mange is obligatory.) 

A lecturer at my university once told me that the partitive forms _du, de la _and _des _are not related to the preposition _de_, but are best thought of as their own kind of expression, as determiners with a meaning close to _some_ in English. 


What are the origins of the partitive article - which Latin words did it derive from? How did its usage become obligatory in French (in French, you must say  _je mange des fraises, _whereas in English and Spanish respectively, we can simply say _I'm eating strawberries _and _Como fresas). _

Thanks


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## CapnPrep

Beachxhair said:


> A lecturer at my university once told me that the partitive forms _du, de la _and _des _are not related to the preposition _de_, but are best thought of as their own kind of expression, as determiners with a meaning close to _some_ in English.


That's the best way to think of them as a learner of French, but "not related to the preposition _de_" is clearly nonsense from an etymological viewpoint.


Beachxhair said:


> What are the origins of the partitive article - which Latin words did it derive from?


_De_ and _ille_, of course.


Beachxhair said:


> How did its usage become obligatory in French


From a functional point of view, determiners became generally obligatory in French as number marking became silent on most nouns and adjectives. Similarly, subject pronouns became obligatory as conjugated forms became less and less distinctive. Both of these processes have the same phonetic origin: the loss of final consonants, which started around the end of the 12th century (but continued for a very long time). See the following thread for more about that:
Final consonants in French


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## fdb

You say « je mange des fraises », but « je ne mange pas de fraises ». So obviously there is a logical connection between « de » and « des ».


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## olaszinho

CapnPrep said:


> That's the best way to think of them as a learner of French, but "not related to the preposition _de_" is clearly nonsense from an etymological viewpoint.
> _De_ and _ille_, of course.
> From a functional point of view, determiners became generally obligatory in French as number marking became silent on most nouns and adjectives. Similarly, subject pronouns became obligatory as conjugated forms became less and less distinctive. Both of these processes have the same phonetic origin: the loss of final consonants, which started around the end of the 12th century (but continued for a very long time). See the following thread for more about that:
> Final consonants in French



In Italian we can say:" mangiamo delle fragole a primavera" using the partitive article ( we eat some strawberries in spring)
but "non mangiamo fragole d'estate" (we do not eat any strawberries in summer) without the preposition "di".
Nonetheless, Italian still retains marking number for nouns and adjectives.
In my opinion, the above explanation may be valid for French but not for the Italian language...


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## CapnPrep

olaszinho said:


> In my opinion, the above explanation may be valid for French but not for the Italian language...


The explanation was about why articles/determiners became obligatory in French, not about the development of the partitive articles specifically. And the argument remains valid for Italian: since plural marking is generally distinctive, there is no reason for the article to become obligatory in plural noun phrases.


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## Nino83

As other members said the partitive article derives from the preposition _de_ plus the definite articles _ille/illa_. 
In French their use is necessary because there's no distinction, in pronunciation, between singular and plural nouns. 
In Italian you can also say "mangia fragole tutto l'anno". 
The "real" partitive article is the singular. In the plural form it compensate for the lack of the plural indefinite article (in French and in Italian there are only singular _un/une_ and _un/uno/una_ while in Spanish and Portuguese there are both singular _un/una/__un/uma_ and plural _unos/unas__/uns/umas_).


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## Beachxhair

CapnPrep said:


> That's the best way to think of them as a learner of French, but "not related to the preposition _de_" is clearly nonsense from an etymological viewpoint.


I had always thought that the _literal _translation of the partitive article was 'of the _____', eg, _des fraises, _of/from the strawberries; 'je mange des fraises' --> literally, I eat from/of the strawberries, which seemed quite logical to me, since you're eating _from _a whole, you're eating a part of it, _from _it. What confuses me is that the preposition _de _in _du, de la, des _suggests that morphologically, the object of the verb is indirect (and there is no past participle agreement in the perfect tenses with en, the pronoun replacing the partitives), even though semantically, the object of the verb is direct. Is a partitive noun phrase analysed as an indirect or direct object?


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## Nino83

Beachxhair said:


> (and there is no past participle agreement in the perfect tenses with en, the pronoun replacing the partitives)



Excuse me but past participle can agree in number and gender with _en_. 
J'ai mangé des fraises. J'en ai mangé(es). 
Ho mangiato delle fragole. Ne ho mangiate.  
It's a direct object. 

"Depuis 1976, un arrété ministériel a officiellement autorisé l'accord.
Des cerises, j'en ai mangées." 

http://www.francaisfacile.com/forum/lire.php?num=7&msg=44821&titre=Accord+participe+pass%E9

Most grammarians advise against the agreement of past participle (except if there is a relative pronoun) not because there is an indirect object (the object is direct) but because _en_ is a _neuter_ _invariable_ pronoun, and it represents _une partie de ce dont on parle_. 
In Italian the agreement is mandatory when _ne_ represents a plural direct object (but in this case _ne_ isn't a real partitive but it's used as a plural indefinite article).


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## Beachxhair

Nino83 said:


> Most grammarians advise against the agreement of past participle (except if there is a relative pronoun) not because there is an indirect object (the object is direct) but because _en_ is a _neuter_ _invariable_ pronoun, and it represents _une partie de ce dont on parle_.
> In Italian the agreement is mandatory when _ne_ represents a plural direct object (but in this case _ne_ isn't a real partitive but it's used as a plural indefinite article).


 This must be why I've always been taught (even now at university) that past participle agreement with _en _is incorrect, even though the agreement is technically allowed.


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## Nino83

Beachxhair said:


> I had always thought that the _literal _translation of the partitive article was 'of the _____', eg, _des fraises, _of/from the strawberries; 'je mange des fraises' --> literally, I eat from/of the strawberries, which seemed quite logical to me, since you're eating _from _a whole, you're eating a part of it, _from _it.



From a morphological point of view you're right (it derives from _de_ + _ille_) but the meaning is _a piece of/a bit of/a part of_ (un pezzo di/una parte di). If we use this literal translation it's clear that there is a direct object. 
In my opinion it seems that we removed the first word (piece/bit/part) so that remained only the preposition _of_ (the), but the meaning remained the same. 

For the particle _en_ (_ne_) I don't know if there are the same meanings in French. 
In Italian it means: 
- _moto da luogo_ complement (from there): es. me *ne* sono andato (da lì, from there) je m'*en* suis allé. In this case past participle doesn't agree in number and gender 
- _genitive case_ (of it, of that): es. Hai letto il libro? *Ne* ho letto solo le prime pagine (del libro, di ciò). Did you read the book? I only read the first pages *of it*. Also in this case the participle doesn't agree. 
-_ plural direct object_: Hai mangiato le mele? *Ne* ho mangiat*e* tante (mele). Did you eat apples? I ate a lot of *apples*. This is the only case when the past participle agrees in number and gender in Italian. 
In Standard French there's not agreement. J'en ai mangé. 

I think that Spanish and Portuguese didn't need the partitive article because they have a plural definite article, so they didn't develop one. 

Spanish: Como una manzana/una*s* manzana*s*/algun*as* manzana*s*
Italian: Mangio una mela/delle mel*e*/alcun*e* mel*e* 
French: Je mange une pomme/des pommes/quelques pommes 

There's no difference in spoken language between _quelque_ and _quelques_ (alcuna/alcune in Italian, alguna/algunas in Spanish) so French needs a partitive. 

All this in my humble opinion.


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## Beachxhair

Nino83 said:


> From a morphological point of view you're right (it derives from _de_ + _ille_) but the meaning is _a piece of/a bit of/a part of_ (un pezzo di/una parte di). If we use this literal translation it's clear that there is a direct object.
> In my opinion it seems that we removed the first word (piece/bit/part) so that remained only the preposition _of_ (the), but the meaning remained the same.



That's interesting. Does anyone know whether there is any evidence that, in an earlier stage of the French language, that 'first word', _une partie, _was attested? Around when did it start to disappear and why?


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## Nino83

Precicely it means "un poco di" "un peu de".


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## CapnPrep

Beachxhair said:


> Does anyone know whether there is any  evidence that, in an earlier stage of the French language, that 'first  word', _une partie, _was attested? Around when did it start to  disappear and why?


It has always been possible to say "a part/a lot/some/enough of  X" etc., and it remains possible. Some authors (e.g. Foulet 1965) believe  that the partitive article developed directly out of this structure  somehow, but there are several problems with this hypothesis (see e.g. a  number of articles by Anne Carlier).


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## Gavril

Beachxhair said:


> What are the origins of the partitive article - which Latin words did it derive from? How did its usage become obligatory in French (in French, you must say  _je mange des fraises, _whereas in English and Spanish respectively, we can simply say _I'm eating strawberries _and _Como fresas). _



This isn't a direct answer to your question, but other languages show a development from the meaning "of/from" to a partitive meaning "(some amount) of". For example, in Finnish, the partitive case is formed with the suffix -_t__a_, which I think was originally an ablative suffix (the ablative corresponding roughly to the meaning "from"). As in French, the partitive plural in Finnish has (with some complications) developed into an indefinite plural.


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## Beachxhair

CapnPrep said:


> It has always been possible to say "a part/a lot/some/enough of  X" etc., and it remains possible. Some authors (e.g. Foulet 1965) believe  that the partitive article developed directly out of this structure  somehow, but there are several problems with this hypothesis (see e.g. a  number of articles by Anne Carlier).



The articles by Anne Carlier addressed my question exactly, thank you. I just have a question about the 'A-over-A principle', mentioned in the article _From preposition to article. _
("In the context of this study, we simply use the ‘A-over-A’ principle as a diagnostic device for the prepositional status of de when it is followed by a NP.") What is the A-over-A principle, and how does it show whether a word is a preposition or not? 

Thank you


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## CapnPrep

Beachxhair said:


> What is the A-over-A principle, and how does it show whether a word is a preposition or not?


Carlier is referring to the fact that French generally does not allow extraction out of prepositional phrases. So if you _can_ extract something out of a phrase introduced by _de_, then this _de_ is not an ordinary preposition. I wouldn't worry too much about the actual A-over-A principle, but if you are interested, you can read Kayne (1975) for French (as cited by Carlier), but then read section 2 of this article by Paul Postal:
Two Case Studies of Chomsky's Play Acting at Linguistics


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