Possessive Partitive Strategies in Uralic Evidence from Mari and Hungarian Quantifiers and Inflected Adpositions

Abstract

In this essay, we analyse how proper partitivity is expressed in Hungarian and Mari. Three strategies are used, one of which – marking on the superset via case or adpositions – is basically identical to what we find in well-studied languages. The other two strategies are possessive agreement with the superset by 1) the quantifier that represents the subset or 2) by the postposition that links the subset to the superset. This means that (at least) one of these entities bears a possessive suffix that indicates the number and person of the superset. We discuss how these strategies work in both languages, and what the structural differences are.