Grammatical cases
List of grammatical cases
Abessive case
Ablative case
Absolutive case
Adessive case
Allative case
Causal case
Causal-final case
Comitative case
Dative case
Dedative case
Delative case
Disjunctive case
Distributive case
Distributive-temporal case
Elative case
Essive case
Essive-formal case
Essive-modal case
Excessive case
Final case
Formal case
Genitive case
Illative case
Inessive case
Instructive case
Instrumental case
Lative case
Locative case
Modal case
Multiplicative case
Oblique case
Objective case
Partitive case
Possessive case
Postpositional case
Prepositional case
Prolative case
Prosecutive case
Separative case
Sociative case
Sublative case
Superessive case
Temporal case
Terminative case
Translative case
Vialis case
Vocative case
Morphosyntactic alignment
Absolutive case
Accusative case
Ergative case
Instrumental case
Instrumental-comitative case
Intransitive case
Nominative case
Declension
Declension in English
edit (http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Template:Case_table)

The basic meaning of the Partitive case is "partialness", "without result" or "without specifying identity".

In the Finnish language, it's used to express unknown identities and irresultative actions. For example, it is found in the following circumstances, with the characteristic ending of "a" or "ta":

• After numbers: "kolme taloa" -> "three houses"
• For incomplete actions and ongoing processes: "luen kirjaa" -> "I'm reading a book"
• After certain verbs, particularly those indicating emotions (as they are irresultative): "rakastan tätä taloa" -> "I love this house"
• For tentative enquiries: "saanko lainata kirjaa?" -> "can I borrow the book?"
• In places where English would use "some" or "any": "onko teillä kirjoja?" -> "do you have any books?"
• For negative statements: "talossa ei ole kirjaa" -> "there is not a book in the house"

A good example of the irresultative meaning of the partitive is this: ammuin karhun (accusative) means "I shot the bear (dead)", whereas ammuin karhua (partitive) means "I shot the bear" without specifying if it died. Notice that Finnish has no native future tense, so that the partitive provides an important reference to the present (luen kirjaa) as opposed to the future (luen kirjan). The latter means "I will read the book", as a result ("the book has been read") indicates action in the future.

The case with an unspecified identity is onko teillä kirjoja, which uses the partitive, because it refers to unspecified books, as contrasted to accusative onko teillä (ne) kirjat?, which means "do you have (those) books?"

It is important to use the partitive with the numerals, because the incorrect form without the partitive, *kymmenen kirjat, would translate to "ten (those) books", which is nonsensical.

Reference: http://virtual.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=25838

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