What is "partitive case"

n. (context grammar English) A noun case used to indicate that an object is affected only partially by the verb, or that the effect is not real. It often corresponds roughly to the English words "some" or "any." It is similar in many ways to the genitive case. Some languages that make use of the partitive case include Finnish, Estonian, and Russian.

The partitive case ( abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical case which denotes "partialness", "without result", or "without specific identity". It is also used in contexts where a subgroup is selected from a larger group, or with numbers.