Rethinking structural case: Partitive case in Sakha

The Sakha language has a special partitive case used only on nonspecific direct
objects in imperative sentences. This is neither a canonical structural case, nor a
canonical inherent case. We show that its basic properties can be explained within
a configurational case theory by assuming that partitive is unmarked case assigned
to any NP within the VP complement of v imp , a special v head found only in the
scope of imperative (Jussive) heads and a few semantical similar items. This theory
is briefly contrasted with one in which partitive is assigned by agreement with a
special v, and one in which partitive is the feature V copied onto a nearby NP.