In
grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...
, the elative case (
abbreviated
An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening, contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened form of a word, usually ended with a trailing per ...
; from "to bring or carry out") is a
locative 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 ...
signifying that something comes from something, somewhere or someone.
Usage
Uralic languages
In
Finnish, the elative is typically formed by adding , in
Estonian by adding to the genitive stem, in
Livonian and in
Erzya. In
Hungarian, the suffix expresses the elative:
: - "out of the house, from the house" (Finnish = "house") - "out of the houses, from the houses" (Finnish = "houses")
: - "out of the house, from the house" (Estonian = "house")
:
Erzya: - "out of the house, from the house" (Erzya = "house")
: - "out of the house" (Hungarian = "house")
In some
dialects of Finnish it is common to drop the final
vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
of the elative ending, which then becomes identical to the elative
morpheme
A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
of Estonian; for example: . This pronunciation is common in southern Finland, appearing in the
southwestern dialects and in some
Tavastian dialects. Most other dialects use the standard form ''-sta''.
Russian
In some rare cases the elative still exists in contemporary Russian, though it was used more widely in 17-18th cc. texts: (out of the forest), (blood from the nose), (from Yaroslavl).
See also
Other locative cases are:
*
Inessive case
In grammar, the inessive case ( abbreviated ; from "to be in or at") is a locative grammatical case. This case carries the basic meaning of "in": for example, "in the house" is in Finnish, in Estonian, () in Moksha, in Basque, in Lithu ...
("in")
*
Superessive case ("on")
*
Adessive case ("by/at")
*
Illative case ("into")
*
Sublative case ("onto")
*
Allative case ("towards")
*
Ablative case
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages. It is used to indicate motion away from something, make ...
("away from")
*
Delative case ("off")
References
Further reading
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elative Case
Grammatical cases