In
grammar, 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 of a
noun or
pronoun 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 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 of ...
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.
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 /
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 (suffix ''-
'').
This case is also called the prosecutive case in some languages.
It is found under this name in
Tundra Nenets
Tundra Nenets is a Uralic languages, Uralic language spoken in European Russia and North-Western Siberia. It is the largest and best-preserved language in the Samoyedic languages, Samoyedic group.
Tundra Nenets is closely related to the Nganasan ...
, 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. ]
See also
*
Perlative case
Further reading
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prolative Case
Grammatical cases