"Drink tea or tea?" - the question of the partitiv in Russian

To drink tea or tea? How to speak? Someone will be puzzled by this matter between the case, for a moment, and will forget. And someone is interested in asking friends in social networks or in search of an answer picks through the Internet.

Anyway, there are people who would like to know the truth - in modern language are both possible variants of the named phrase? And how, after all, is it right to speak?

Which option is allowed in modern language

Using phrases like little (people - people), bag (sugar - sugar), glass (tea - tea), where the dependent words are nounsmasculine gender of the second declension in the singular and in the genitive case, the Russian people of past times chose the genitive case with the ending -at), with the quantitative value of real nouns, the meaning of a part of the whole.

In the absence of a quantitative value, a form was used with an ending -and I):

the will of the people;
sweetness of sugar;
smell tea.

According to the observations of linguists, in our days forms with an ending -y (-y) The meaning of a part of the whole is ignored, and the option "a glass of tea" completely usable and even more preferable than "a glass of tea". Particularly reinforced form with the end -and I) presence of a noun adjective:

a glass of fragrant tea;
a pack of cane sugar.

However, in word combinations by type of control (with the dependence of the noun on the verb) the ending of the real nouns -y (-y), as a rule, is preserved:

to pour soup;
pour off the tobacco;
to drink poison.

Thus, the question of how it is right - to drink tea or tea - is resolved more definitely. But where does this duality of the genitive case come from?

Quantitative-separative case

Some languages (for example, Finnish, Estonian) are characterized by the grammatical case of partives, or the partial case, which serves to denote part of the whole.

In the Russian language the partitive also takes place. Some prominent Russian linguists (AA Shakhmatov, VV Vinogradov, VA Bogoroditsky), he is designated as the quantitative-separative case. He is also called the second genitive, since not all recognize the independence of the quantitative-separative case. He serves only nouns abstract and nouns with the meaning of reality. For example:

the course is in motion;
fear - fear;
honey - honey;
tea and tea.

In the opinion of many, isolating the quantitative-separative case into an independent case does not make sense, because the use of its forms on -y (-y) has sharply decreased. Many of our contemporaries do not see sin when they say: "I want to drink tea." They simply do not break their heads. What is called, the language develops. But for some reason, others doubt: to drink tea or tea?

How all the same it is correct?

Despite all the liberalism of modernlinguistics, writing system grammatical errors on the development of language, the latter himself defends his rules. And this is easy to verify. It is only necessary to give the diminutive form of the noun, considered above, and doubts in the variant of their use fall away: