The distributive-temporal of a

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

is a

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals) that corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a Nominal group (functional grammar), n ...

specifying when and how often something is done.

In Hungarian

This case (-nta/-nte) in Hungarian can express how often something happens (e.g. ''havonta'' "monthly", ''naponta'' "daily", ''telente'' "every winter", ''reggelente'' "every morning"); it can alternate with the

distributive case The distributive case (abbreviated ) is used on nouns for the meanings of 'per' or 'each.' In Hungarian it is and expresses the manner when something happens to each member of a set one by one (e.g., "per head", "in some case"), or the freque ...

in words of temporal meaning.

In Finnish

This

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...

type in Finnish can express that something happens at a frequent point in time (e.g. "on Sundays" is ''sunnuntaisin''), or an origin (e.g. "born in" is ''syntyisin''). It is restricted to a small number of adverb stems and nouns, mostly those with the plural formed with an ''-i-'' suffix. The ending is ''-sin''. For example, the root ''päivä'' (day) has the plural ''päivi-'', and thus the temporal distributive ''päivisin'' ("during the days"). The temporal distributive case specifies when something is done, in contrast to the

, which specifies how often something is done, as in regular maintenance. These sentences are a good example: ''Siivoan päivisin'' vs. ''Siivoan päivittäin''. The former (temp. dist.) means "I clean by day", implying the cleaning is done in the daytime, whereas the latter (dist.) means "I clean daily", implying that there's no day without cleaning. If the plural has another form than ''-i-'', either ''joka'' (each) or the

essive case In grammar, the essive case, or similaris case, ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case.O'Grady, William, John Archibald, Mark Aronoff, and Janie Rees-Miller. "Morphology: The Analysis of Word Structure." Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. 6 ...

is used. For example, ''uusi vuosi'' (New Year) is either ''joka uusi vuosi'' or ''uusina vuosina'', respectively.

References

Hungarian language Grammatical cases {{Grammatical cases