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 domain ...

, the prolative case (

abbreviated An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...

), also called the vialis case (

), prosecutive case (

), traversal case, mediative case, or translative case,Haspelmath, Martin. ''Terminology of Case'' in ''Handbook of Case'', Oxford University Press, 2006. is a

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 ...

of a

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, ...

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...

that has the basic meaning of "by way of" or "via". In

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

, the prolative case follows an established application in a number of fossilized expressions to indicate "by (medium of transaction)". It can be used in other constructions, but then it does not sound 'natural'. Examples would be "postitse" ("by post"), "puhelimitse" ("by telephone"), "meritse" ("by sea"), "netitse" ("over the Internet"). A number of Finnish grammarians classify the prolative form as an

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...

because it does not require

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus, a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of law ** Meeting o ...

with adjectives like other Finnish cases. This claim is not true, however, because an adjective will agree with the prolative: "Hän hoiti asian pitkitse kirjeitse" ("He/she dealt with the matter by way of a long letter"). The prolative exists in a similar state in the

Estonian language Estonian ( ) is a Finnic language, written in the Latin script. It is the official language of Estonia and one of the official languages of the European Union, spoken natively by about 1.1 million people; 922,000 people in Estonia and 160, ...

. The vialis case in Eskimo–Aleut languages has a similar interpretation, used to express movement using a surface or way. For example, in the Greenlandic language 'by ship' or in Central Alaskan Yup'ik 'by river' or 'by sled'.

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

grammars frequently list the ''nortzat / nortako'' case (suffix ''-tzat'' or ''-tako'') as "prolative" (''prolatiboa''). However, the meaning of this case is unrelated to the one just described above for other languages and alternatively has been called "

essive 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 ...

/ translative", as it means "for omething else as (being) omething else; e.g., ''hiltzat eman'' "to give up for dead", ''lelotzat hartu zuten'' "they took him for a fool". The meaning "by way of" of the case labelled prolative in the above languages is expressed in Basque by means of the

instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...

(suffix ''- ''). This case is also called the prosecutive case in some languages. It is found under this name in Tundra Nenets, in Old

and, with spatial nouns, in Mongolian.Sechenbaatar ečenbaγatur Borjigin. 2003. ''The Chakhar dialect of Mongol: a morphological description''. Helsinki:

Finno-Ugrian society Finno-Ugrian Society (french: Société Finno-Ougrienne, fi, Suomalais-Ugrilainen Seura) is a Finnish learned society, dedicated to the study of Uralic and Altaic languages. It was founded in Helsinki in 1883 by the proposal of professor Otto ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Prolative Case Grammatical cases

See also

Further reading

References