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EUROPEAN PARTITIVES IN COMPARISON d.*Közül-ük/*E — diákok közül kettő-jük-kel beszéltem. from-3PL this student.pL Írom two-3PL-INS speak.PST.1SG Intended to mean: ‘I spoke with two of them / these students? The picture in other Uralic languages is basically similar, but there are many differences. For instance, (9) shows that the three strategies are mutually exclusive in Hungarian: the superset cannot be overtly represented in a construction where the subset is inflected for it (9d). Mari, another Uralic language spoken in Europe, is much more tolerant in this respect: the proper partitive relationship can be marked simultaneously by means of two (10b) or even all the three (10c) of the structures or strategies available (10). (10) Mari (Finno-Ugric, Volgaic) [..] a. Kokyt-so dene kutyrenam. two[noM]-3sG with speak.psT2.1sG b. Nunyn koklaste kokyt-$o dene kutyrenam. they.GEN among two-3SG[NOM] with speak.psT2.1sG c. Nunyn koklasty-st kokyt-so dene kutyrenam. they.GEN among-3PL two-3SG[NOM] with speak.PST2.15G ‘[Twenty students took the exam.] I spoke with two of them? (Elena Vedernikova, pers. comm.) Another notable difference between Hungarian and Mari lies in the fact that Hungarian proper partitives exhibit regular possessive agreement, while in Mari, a default 3" singular possessive marker (-SE, -ZE, -Z) is used, irrespective of the fact that the superset that it is associated with is inherently plural. This invariable 3" person singular marker can be associated in colloquial speech even with 1‘ and 2" person plural pronominal supersets, as in (11). All in all, it seems that the 3" singular possessive suffix in Mari has gained a new function as a marker of proper partitivity and in these constructions it does not behave as a regular possessive suffix anymore.”° (11) Mari (Finno-Ugric, Volgaic) [...] Kokyt-so provalitl-en-na. two-3SG[NOM] fail-2PST-1PL ‘[We took the exam.] Two of us failed! (Elena Vedernikova, pers. comm.) > Töth et al.: Possessive partitive strategies. 26 Ibid. + 20 +
