grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

, the prolative case ( abbreviated ), also called the vialis case ( abbreviated ), prosecutive case ( abbreviated ), 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 Numeral (linguistics), numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In vari ...

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, d ...

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 co ...

that has the basic meaning of "by way of" or "via". In Finnish, 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 160,0 ...

. The vialis case in

Eskimo–Aleut languages The Eskaleut (), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of w ...

has a similar interpretation, used to express movement using a surface or way. For example, in the

Greenlandic language Greenlandic ( kl, kalaallisut, link=no ; da, grønlandsk ) is an Eskimo–Aleut language with about 56,000 speakers, mostly Greenlandic Inuit in Greenland. It is closely related to the Inuit languages in Canada such as Inuktitut. It is the mos ...

'by ship' or in

Central Alaskan Yup'ik Central Alaskan Yup'ik may refer to: * Central Alaskan Yup'ik people * Central Alaskan Yup'ik language Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Direction ...

'by river' or 'by sled'. Basque 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 instru ...

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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Prolative Case Grammatical cases

See also

Further reading

References