198 Chapter 7 Nominals and noun phrases
b. %Pang-lako banne se dhateng e kantor.
NOM-work no REL come at office
‘No worker came to the office.’
The preferred structure makes use of the negative existential adha', illustrated in
(75).
(75) Adha' pang-lako e kantor.
not.exist NOM-work at office
‘There are no workers in the office.’
In order to convey the notion of an indeterminate sized subset of a group,
the derived quantificational expression sabagiyan ‘part’ is used. This formed
from the root bagi ‘portion, share’ with the nominalizing suffix -an and the
prefix sa- ‘one’. Sabagiyan most frequently occurs in prenominal position, as in
(76) and (77a), but can also follow the noun it quantifies (77b).
(76) Sabagiyan mored-da Pa' Hadi bakal lulus tes.
part student-DEF Mr Hadi will pass test
‘Some of Pak Hadi’s students will pass the test.’
(77) a. Sabagiyan na'-kana' a-maen bal e lon-alon.
part RED-child AV-play ball at alun-alun
‘Some of the children played soccer in the alun-alun.’
b. Na'-kana' sabagiyan a-maen bal e lon-alon.
RED-child part AV-play ball at alun-alun
‘Some of the children played soccer in the alun-alun.’
At times sabagiyan occurs with dhari ‘from’, forming an explicit partitive con-
struction.^3
(78) Sabagiyan dhari buku-na Nabun jiya parlo e-pa-teppa'.
part from book-DEF Nabun this need OV-CS-right
‘Some of these books of Nabun’s need to be mended.’
It is possible to float the quantifier kabbi from the noun is quantifies,
though no other quantifiers permit this.
(^3) Partitive constructions with numbers are described in the section that follows.