Case: case
Definition
Case is an inflectional feature for nouns, pronouns, adjectives
and numerals in Estonian.
Estonian has 14 inflectional cases:
nominative
genitive
partitive
illative (+ additive)
inessive
elative
allative
adessive
ablative
translative
terminative
essive
abessive
comitative
Nom: nominative / direct
The base form of the noun, typically used as citation form (lemma). In many languages this is the word form used for subjects of clauses. If the language has only two cases, which are called “direct” and “oblique”, the direct case will be marked Nom.
Examples
- [et] maja “house”
- [et] laud “table”
- [et] koer “dog”
- [et] riik “government”
Gen: genitive
Prototypical meaning of genitive is that the noun phrase somehow belongs to its governor; it would often be translated by the English preposition of. English has the “saxon genitive” formed by the suffix ‘s; but we will normally not need the feature in English because the suffix gets separated from the noun during tokenization.
Note that despite considerable semantic overlap, the genitive case is not the same as the feature of possessivity (Poss). Possessivity is a lexical feature, i.e. it applies to lemma and its whole paradigm. Genitive is a feature of just a subset of word forms of the lemma. Semantics of possessivity is much more clearly defined while the genitive (as many other cases) may be required in situations that have nothing to do with possessing. For example, [cs] bez prezidentovy dcery “without the president’s daughter” is a prepositional phrase containing the preposition bez “without”, the possessive adjective prezidentovy “president’s” and the noun dcery “daughter”. The possessive adjective is derived from the noun prezident but it is really an adjective (with separate lemma and paradigm), not just a form of the noun. In addition, both the adjective and the noun are in their genitive forms (the nominative would be prezidentova dcera). There is nothing possessive about this particular occurrence of the genitive. It is there because the preposition bez always requires its argument to be in genitive.
Examples
- [cs] Praha je hlavní město České republiky. “Prague is the capital of the Czech Republic.”
Par: partitive
In Finnish the partitive case expresses indefinite identity and unfinished actions without result.
Examples
- [fi] kolme taloa “three houses”; (the -a suffix of talo)
- [fi] rakastan tätä taloa “I love this house”
- [fi] saanko lainata kirjaa? “can I borrow the book?” (the -a suffix of kirja)
- [fi]lasissa on maitoa “there is (some) milk in the glass”
Ill: illative
The illative case expresses direction into something.
Examples
- [et] maja “house”; majasse “into the house”
Add: additive
Distinguished by some scholars in Estonian, not recognized by traditional grammar, exists in the Multext-East Estonian tagset and in the Eesti keele puudepank. It has the meaning of illative, and some grammars will thus consider the additive just an alternative form of illative. Forms of this case exist only in singular and not for all nouns.
Examples
- [et] riik “government”; riigisse “to the government” (singular illative); riiki “to the government” (singular additive)
Ine: inessive
The inessive case expresses location inside of something.
Examples
- [et] maja “house”; majas “in the house”
Ela: elative
The elative case expresses direction out of something.
Examples
- [et] maja “house”; majast “from the house”
All: allative
The allative case expresses direction to something (destination is adessive, i.e. at or on that something).
Examples
- [hu] pénztár “cash desk”; pénztárhoz “to the cash desk”
- [fi] pöytä “table”; pöydälle “onto the table”
Ade: adessive
The adessive case expresses location at or on something. The corresponding directional cases are allative (towards something) and ablative (from something).
Examples
- [et] laud “table”; laual “on the table”
Note that adessive is used to express location on the surface of something in Finnish and Estonian, but does not carry this meaning in Hungarian.
Abl: ablative
Prototypical meaning: direction from some point.
Examples
- [hu] a barátomtól jövök “I’m coming from my friend”
- [fi] pöydältä “from the table”; katolta “from the roof”; rannalta “from the beach”
Tra: translative / factive
The translative case expresses a change of state (“it becomes X”, “it changes to X”). Also used for the phrase “in language X”. In the Szeged Treebank, this case is called factive.
Examples
- [et] kell kuus “six o’clock”; kella kuueks “by six o’clock”
Ter: terminative / terminal allative
The terminative case specifies where something ends in space or time. Similar case in Basque is called terminal allative (Spanish adlativo terminal).
Examples
- [et] jõeni “down to the river”; kella kuueni “till six o’clock”
Ess: essive / prolative
The essive case expresses a temporary state, often it corresponds to
English “as a …” A similar case in Basque is called prolative
and it should be tagged Ess too.
Examples
- [et] laps “child”; lapsena “as a child”
Abe: abessive
The abessive case corresponds to the English preposition without.
Examples
- [fi] raha “money”; rahatta “without money”
Com: comitative / associative
The comitative (also called associative) case corresponds to English “together with …”
Examples
- [et] koer “dog”; koeraga “with dog”
Case in other languages: [am] [apu] [arr] [bej] [bg] [cs] [el] [eme] [en] [es] [ess] [et] [fi] [ga] [gn] [grc] [gub] [hu] [hy] [ka] [kmr] [koi] [kpv] [ky] [mdf] [myu] [myv] [pcm] [ps] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [tl] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj] [uz] [xcl]