Mutual exclusivity of Estonian genitive and partitive markers

Determine whether, in Estonian, the genitive marker (analyzed here as a collective-related marker) and the partitive marker are mutually exclusive on nouns, in light of attested forms such as raamat-u ‘book-GEN’ and raamat-u-t ‘book-GEN-PART’.

Background

Within the paper’s morphology-driven framework, countability and definiteness interact via intrinsic markers. The author suggests that in some languages markers associated with collectivity and partitivity may belong to different inflectional classes and, in principle, could co-occur.

Estonian provides forms like raamat-u ‘book-GEN’ and raamat-u-t ‘book-GEN-PART’, raising the question of whether the genitive (argued to function as a collective-related marker in Finnic) and the partitive are mutually exclusive or can surface together. Resolving this would clarify how these markers are classified (intrinsic vs. extrinsic) and how markedness operates in the Finnic nominal system.