Locative case

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Locative (also called the seventh case) is a case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases together with the lative and separative case.

Contents

1 The locative case in various languages

1.1 Indo-European languages
1.2 Turkish
1.3 Finnish
1.4 Inari Sami
1.5 Hungarian
1.6 Russian

The locative case in various languages

The locative case exists in many languages, e.g. the Altaic, Indo-European, and Uralic languages.

Indo-European languages

The locative case is found in:

in modern Balto-Slavic languages (see however prepositional case)
some classical Indo-European languages, particularly Sanskrit and Latin
in uncommon, archaic or literary use in certain modern Indian languages (such as Marathi in which a separate ablative case has however disappeared)

Turkish

The locative case exists in Turkish. For instance, in Turkish, elim means: my hand, and elimde means in my hand, so using -de and -da suffixes, the locative case is marked.

Finnish

In Finnish, there are two sets of local cases. Instead of the locative, the Finnish language has the inessive, which indicates a location inside of a place, and the adessive, which indicates a location outside of a place. The ancient Uralic locative is still used in some expressions in modern Finnish, e.g.

ulkona 'outside'
kotona 'at home'.

In the Finnish grammar, the locative is included in the essive case. Its ending is -na/-nä.

Inari Sami

In Inari Sami, the locative suffix is -st.

kyeleest 'in the language'
kieđast 'in the hand'.

Hungarian

In the Hungarian language, nine such cases exist, yet the name locative case refers to a form (-t/-tt) used only in a few city/town names along with the Inessive case or Superessive case. It can also be observed in a few local adverbs and postpositions. It is no longer productive.

Examples:

Győrött (also Győrben), Pécsett (also Pécsen), Vácott (also Vácon), Kaposvárt and Kaposvárott (also Kaposváron), Vásárhelyt (also Vásárhelyen)
itt (here), ott (there), imitt, amott (there yonder), alatt (under), fölött (over), között (between/among), mögött (behind) etc.

The town/city name suffixes -ban/-ben are the inessive ones, and the -on/-en/-ön are the superessive ones.

Russian

In the Russian language, the locative case is often and recently called the prepositional case. This because this case is only used after a preposition and not always used for locations. Statements such as "в библиотеке" ("in library") or "на Аляске" ("in Alaska") show the usuage for location. However, this case is also used after the preposition "о" ("about") as in "о студенте" ("about the student").

Nevertheless few words preserved a distinctive form of locative case: "лежать в снегу́" (to lie in the snow), but "думать о снеге" (to think about snow). Other examples are дом (house) - "на дому́", дым (smoke) - "в дыму́", бок (side) - "на боку́". The stress marks here signify that the stress is made on the last syllable, unlike another case that has the same spelling.

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