Estonian/Partitive

Osastav kääne

As we'll try to cover the first three cases as heavily as possible before moving on, in this lesson we'll talk about accusing partitive and total direct objects. The English language uses "of" to mark part of a noun, for instance it can be used to form the direct object "part of a noun", used with the verb "mark" earlier in this sentence.

The Estonian Accusative case is actually partitive in some verbs. In other verbs the partitive makes no sense, but the Accusative remains the only option despite talking about the whole of something:


 * Ma tean seda - I know this/that

With some verbs, the Genitive is used to mark the total or final of a direct object.

This clearly does not happen with teadma:


 * Ma tean selle - this is incorrect

The partitive can talk about part of a direct object (such as uncountable nouns like water) or that of an unfinished action.

Verbs
Here are the verbs we'll be using in this lesson:

Keep in mind that when using the Genitive case, the question determiner for the noun will always be mille? or kelle? (persons).

Vocabulary

 * sein - seina - .seina (n) - wall
 * vesi - vee - vett (n) - water
 * ära (adv) - perfective situation marker
 * ära (positional) - away. This sometimes substitutes the adverbial "ära" entirely
 * .kaasa (adv) - along with (implied Comitative (with-saying, XIV) noun)