Re: OT: sorta OT: cases: please help...

En réponse à Vasiliy Chernov <bc_@...>:

>
> Not so weird, if you consider the use of _de_ (resembling Gen. a lot)
> with
> negations in French. (Christophe? I always make mistakes in French :(
> )
>
You're correct about the use of "de" for objects of negative verbs (J'ai une
voiture, je n'ai pas de voiture), but I wouldn't consider that to be part of
the genitive use of "de", but rather of the partitive use of "de", like "du
sucre": sugar, even though in this case the definite article is not present in
the "de" form. IIRC there are some languages with a partitive case which use it
as object of a negative verb (Finnish?). Anyway, in both explanations it seems
to have equivalents in other languages, so I guess both explanations could be
correct (you could also think of the influence of the expression "pas de": no,
with adjectival sense). "De" is such an ubiquitous preposition in French that
it's difficult to give any secure explanation about it.

Christophe.

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