Whereas French does have a partitive pronoun (also called quantitative pronoun), standard German does not have one. By means of a Grammaticality Judgment Task it is investigated how advanced German learners of L2 French judge the use of the partitive pronoun or its absence in various contexts. The main goal of the paper is to investigate what role the L1 plays in the acquisition of the use of the partitive pronoun in French. Three different scenarios are explored, namely, the hypotheses i) of poor performance in all contexts, ii) of poor performance only in contexts in which French uses a partitive pronoun, and iii) of poor performance only in contexts where positive transfer from similar constructions in German is not possible. Our results support the third scenario, showing that the possibility of positive transfer should be understood in a broader way. At the same time our results show which contexts are vulnerable and which ones seems to be easier to learn in L2 acquisition of French by German L1 speakers.