Partitive plural is a grammatical number that is used to modify a noun which represents a part of some whole amount, as opposed to the

comprehensive plural Comprehensive may refer to: *Comprehensive layout, the page layout of a proposed design as initially presented by the designer to a client. *Comprehensive school, a state school that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement o ...

, used when the noun represents the total amount of something. It is one of four grammatical numbers in Quenya, the others being singular,

dual Dual or Duals may refer to: Paired/two things * Dual (mathematics), a notion of paired concepts that mirror one another ** Dual (category theory), a formalization of mathematical duality *** see more cases in :Duality theories * Dual (grammatical ...

, and plural. A similar meaning can be expressed by the partitive case in Finnish language (which influenced

J.R.R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and '' The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawli ...

in inventing his

fictional language Fictional languages are the subset of constructed languages (conlangs) that have been created as part of a fictional setting (e.g. for use in a book, movie, television show, or video game). Typically they are the creation of one individual, while ...

Quenya Quenya ()Tolkien wrote in his "Outline of Phonology" (in '' Parma Eldalamberon'' 19, p. 74) dedicated to the phonology of Quenya: is "a sound as in English ''new''". In Quenya is a combination of consonants, ibidem., p. 81. is a constructed l ...

). One of its uses in Finnish is to express a part of a larger object, or a subset of a group of several objects. An example in Finnish would be the difference between the use of partitive and accusative:

See also