The essive-modal case is a case in the
Hungarian language
Hungarian () is an Uralic language spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighbouring countries. It is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary, it is also spoken by Hungarian ...
that expresses either the state, capacity, task in which somebody is or which somebody has (
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. 6th ...
, e.g. "as a reward", "for example"), or the manner in which an action is carried out, an event happens, or the language which somebody knows (
Modal case
In linguistics, the modal case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case used to express ability, intention, necessity, obligation, permission, possibility, etc. It takes the place of English modal verbs such as can, could, would, might, may.
This case ...
, e.g. "sloppily", "unexpectedly", "speak ''German''").
An example of this would be in the sentence "Beszélek magyarul." (I speak Hungarian.) The sentence denotes the ability of being able to speak the Hungarian language. According to
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...
rules, ul becomes ül in cases such as "Beszélek németül." (I speak German.) because the word for "German", ''német'' is composed completely of median and/or frontal vowels.
Grammatical cases
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