Martí Girbau on Partitives

Núria Martí Girbau. Partitives: one or two nouns?.

bq. The purpose of this paper is to revise the arguments presented in the literature for a partitive structure with two nouns and show that they provide no (strong) evidence for the presence of an empty noun in partitives. Even in those cases where the explanation based on an empty noun seems plausible, an alternative will be provided to show that there is no need to postulate an empty category to account for the data. Moreover a few new arguments will also be presented against analysing partitives as containing two nouns, which will led as to the conclusion that a partitive structure containing a single noun seems a better option. Finally, a proposal of analysis for partitives with a single noun will be briefly presented.