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 Hungar ...

the essive-formal case combines 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. 6t ...

and the

formal case The formal case is a grammatical case that transmits a sense of making a condition as a quality. It can be found in the Hungarian language, more commonly referred to as the essive-formal case In the Hungarian language the essive-formal case comb ...

, and it can express the position, task, state (e.g. "as a tourist"), or the manner (e.g. "like a hunted animal"). The status of the suffix in the declension system is disputed for several reasons. First, in general, Hungarian case suffixes are absolute word-final, while permits further suffixation by the locative suffix . Second, most Hungarian case endings participate in

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an 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 typically long distance, me ...

, while does not. For these reasons, many modern analyses of the Hungarian case system, starting with

László Antal László Antal (25 June 1930 – January 1993) was a Hungarian linguist, structuralist, Doctor of Science (1981), and Professor of Linguistics. He was considered the sole representative of structural linguistics in America in Hungary. He adapt ...

's "" (1961) do not consider the essive-formal to be a case. On the other hand, it complies with the criteria set for Hungarian cases by modern descriptive grammars, namely that it can appear as a specific verb argument, such as in (’treat, handle as ...’), (’behave as ...’), (’graduate as ...’), (’find employment as ...’) etc.É. Kiss, Katalin–Kiefer, Ferenc–Siptár, Péter. ''Új magyar nyelvtan.''

References

Grammatical cases {{Ling-morph-stub