Italian pedagogical texts in general hold the position that the partitive is not obligatory as it is in French. However, some of these texts devote a great deal of time to repetition and transformation drills while others never mention the construction at all until the chapters on the pronoun replacement of accusative complements. Italian phrase structure rules require that all accusative complements be replaced by a pro-complement in the discourse. Samples of native speech clearly show that the partitive is often used in the accusative complement, especially in affirmative statements. It is not normally used in negative sentences and is also said to be optional in questions. This optional partitive rule presents a problem for the English language learner. It is this learning task which prompted the reevaluation and reformulation of the partitive construction. If partitive sentences are in fact used by the native speaker in Italian, then sentences like "vorrei delvino" (I'd like some wine); should be introduced when the concepts definite and indefinite are first presented to set up a category which will be filled by an obligatory pro-complement introduced at the same time as other pro-complements. (Author/AM)