Revisiting a Romanian “friend of mine”

The paper tackles two Romanian partitive constructions that feature partitive DE “of”, one of which is a true partitive (un prieten de-ai mei/ a friend DE-AL.M.PL mine/ ‘a friend of mine’), while the other is a possessive partitive (un prieten de-al meu / a friend DE-AL.M.SG mine / ‘a friend of mine’). Since it has often been claimed that Romanian lacks the partitive construction, in the sense that Romanian does not use the preposition DE in the partitive construction, the first aim of the paper is that of suggesting a possible explanation for the loss of DE in the proper/standard partitive construction. At the same time, the paper aims to give a description of the possessive partitive to show how it differs from the standard partitive in its syntax and interpretation and why the use of the singular to designate whole is justified by the properties of the construction.