Illative Case

In grammar, the illative case (; abbreviated ; from "brought in") is a grammatical case used in the Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Hungarian languages. It is one of the locative cases, and has the basic meaning of "into (the inside of)". An example from Hungarian is ('into the house', with meaning 'the house'). An example from Estonian is and ('into the house'), formed from ('house'). An example from Finnish is ('into the house'), formed from ('a house'), another from Lithuanian is ('into the boat') formed from ('boat'), and from Latvian ('into the boat') formed from ('boat').

In Finnish

The case is formed by adding ''-hVn'', where 'V' represents the last vowel, and then removing the 'h' if a simple long vowel would result. For example, + ''Vn'' becomes with a simple long 'oo'; cf. + ''hVn'' becomes , without the elision of 'h'. This unusually complex way of adding a suffix can be explained by its reconstructed origin: a voiced palatal fricative. (Modern Finnish has lost palatalization and fricatives other than 'h' or 's'.) In some dialects spoken in Ostrobothnia, notably South Ostrobothnia, the 'h' is not removed; one says . Some dialects of Finland Proper and Kymenlaakso also have a similar feature. In some instances is added, e.g. (room) and (London) thus and respectively.

The other locative cases in Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are:
* Inessive case ("(to be) in")
* Elative case ("out of")
* Adessive case ("(to be) on")
* Allative case ("onto")
* Ablative case ("from, off")

In Lithuanian

The illative case, denoting direction of movement, is now less common in the standard language but is common in the spoken language, especially in certain dialects. Its singular form, heard more often than the plural, appears in books, newspapers, etc. Most Lithuanian nouns can take the illative ending, indicating that from the descriptive point of view the illative still can be treated as a case in Lithuanian. Since the beginning of the 20th century it isn't included in the lists of standard Lithuanian cases in most grammar books and textbooks, and the prepositional construction į+ accusative is more frequently used today to denote direction. The illative case was used extensively in older Lithuanian; the first Lithuanian grammar book, by Daniel Klein, mentions both illative and į+accusative but calls the usage of the illative "more elegant". Later, it has often appeared in the written texts of the authors who grew up in Dzūkija or Eastern Aukštaitija, such as Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius.

The illative case in Lithuanian has its own endings, which are different for each declension paradigm, although quite regular, compared with some other Lithuanian cases. An ending of the illative always ends with in the singular, and is the final part of an ending of the illative in the plural.

Certain fixed phrases in the standard language are illatives, such as ("to arraign"), ("turn right"), ("for the sake of" or "in the name of", e.g., in the name of the political party "Vardan Lietuvos", "For Lithuania").

In Tungusic languages

Tungusic languages have a rich case system, and as shown below the allative is among them:

Further reading

*
*

References

External links

Hungarian illative case
from www.HungarianReference.com

{{Grammatical cases

Grammatical cases