grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes doma ...

, the inessive case ( abbreviated ; from la, inesse "to be in or at") is a

locative In grammar, the locative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...

. This case carries the basic meaning of "in": for example, "in the house" is in Finnish, in

Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also * ...

, () in

Moksha ''Moksha'' (; sa, मोक्ष, '), also called ''vimoksha'', ''vimukti'' and ''mukti'', is a term in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism for various forms of emancipation, enlightenment, liberation, and release. In its soteriologic ...

, in Basque, in Lithuanian, in Latgalian and in Hungarian. In Finnish the inessive case is typically formed by adding . Estonian adds to the genitive stem. In Moksha () is added (in Erzya ()). In Hungarian, the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

is most commonly used for inessive case, although many others, such as and others are also used, especially with

cities A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

. In the Finnish language, the inessive case is considered the first (in

the second) of the six locative cases, which correspond to locational

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

s in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

. The remaining five cases are: * Elative case ("out of") *

Illative case In grammar, the illative case (; abbreviated ; from la, illatus "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 "int ...

("into") * Allative case ("onto") * Adessive case ("on") *

Ablative case In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...

("from")

Finnish

The

Finnish language Finnish ( endonym: or ) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedi ...

inessive uses the

or (depending on

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 ...

). It is usually added to

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

s and associated

adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...

s. It is used in the following ways: * Expressing the static state of being in something. :: = ''we live in

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bot ...

'' * (with time expressions) stating how long something took to be accomplished or done :possible

translation Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...

s include ''in, within'' :: = ''within 2 years, during 2 years'' * when two things are closely connected :English translations can include ''on'' in phrases of this type :: = ''N.N. on the phone'' :: = ''the ring is on my

finger A finger is a limb of the body and a type of digit, an organ of manipulation and sensation found in the hands of most of the Tetrapods, so also with humans and other primates. Most land vertebrates have five fingers ( Pentadactyly). Chamber ...

'' *as an existensial clause with the

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

(to be), to express possession of objects :: = ''the

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, spor ...

has 68 pages'' *with the verb , :: = ''I visit the bar'' *There are both

singular Singular may refer to: * Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms * Singular homology * SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS) * Singular or sounder, a group of boar ...

and

plural The plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the ...

forms :: = ''I visit the bars''

Dialectal variants

In a large part of the

southwestern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...

, south Ostrobothnian,

southeastern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...

as well as in some Tavastian dialects, the suffix is simply ''-s'' (e.g. ''maas'', ''talos''), similarly to Estonian. This is an example of

apocope In phonology, apocope () is the loss ( elision) of a word-final vowel. In a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any final sound (including consonants) from a word. Etymology ''Apocope'' comes from the Greek () from () "cutting off", fro ...

. When coupled with a possessive suffix, the result can be like in standard Finnish "''maassani, talossani''" or a shorter "''maasani, talosani''" depending on the dialect: the former is more common in Tavastian and southeastern dialects while the latter is more common in southwestern dialects. Most

central and northern Ostrobothnian dialects Central and Northern Ostrobothnian dialects ( fi, Keski-ja Pohjois-Pohjanmaan murteet) are Western Finnish dialects spoken in Northern and Central Ostrobothnia, as well as in the Ranua municipality in Lapland. The dialects have been influenced b ...

as well as some

and

Peräpohjola dialects The Peräpohjola dialects ( fi, Peräpohjalaiset murteet) are forms of Finnish spoken in Lapland in Finland, Sweden, and Norway. The dialect group belongs to the Western Finnish dialects and it is divided into five more specific dialect groups ...

use a shorter suffix ''-sa/-sä'', e.g. ''maasa, talosa''.

References

Grammatical cases {{grammar-stub

Finnish

Dialectal variants

Further reading

References