Elative case

In grammar, the elative case (abbreviated ELA; from Latin: efferre "to bring or carry out") is a locative grammatical case signifying that something comes from something, somewhere or someone.

Usage

Uralic languages

In Finnish, the elative is typically formed by adding sta/stä, in Estonian by adding -st to the genitive stem, -õst in Livonian and -sto in Erzya. In Hungarian, the suffix -ból/-ből expresses the elative:

Finnish: talosta - "out of the house, from the house" (Finnish talo = "house") taloista - "out of the houses, from the houses" (Finnish talot = "houses")

Estonian: majast - "out of the house, from the house" (Estonian maja = "house")

Erzya: kudosto - "out of the house, from the house" (Erzya kudo = "house")

Hungarian: házból - "out of the house" (Hungarian ház = "house")

In some dialects of Finnish it is common to drop the final vowel of the elative ending, which then becomes identical to the elative morpheme of Estonian; for example: talost. This pronunciation is common in southern Finland, appearing in the southwestern dialects and in some Tavastian dialects. Most other dialects use the standard form -sta.

Russian

In some rare cases the elative still exists in contemporary Russian, though it was used more widely in 17-18th cc. texts: и́з лесу (out of the forest), кровь и́з носу (blood from the nose), из Яросла́влю (from Yaroslavl).

See also

Look up elative case in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Other locative cases are:

• Inessive case ("in")
• Superessive case ("on")
• Adessive case ("by/at")
• Illative case ("into")
• Sublative case ("onto")
• Allative case ("towards")
• Ablative case ("away from")
• Delative case ("off")

References

1. uusikielemme (2022-02-14). "The Elative Case (Mistä) – Finnish Grammar". Uusi kielemme. Retrieved 2023-02-01.
2. Ilola, Eeva (July 1995). "Spatial prepositions in Russian and their Finnish equivalents". Russian Linguistics. 19 (2): 187–218. doi:10.1007/bf01080721. ISSN 0304-3487.

Further reading

• Karlsson, Fred (2018). Finnish - A Comprehensive Grammar. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-82104-0.
• Anhava, Jaakko (2015). "Criteria For Case Forms in Finnish and Hungarian Grammars". journal.fi. Helsinki: Finnish Scholarly Journals Online.