Case
: case
Nom
: nominative
The base form, typically used as a citation form (lemma).
Examples
- [fi] koira juoksee “the dog runs”
Acc
: accusative
In many languages used for direct objects of verbs.
We follow ISK in not recognizing the accusative except for the personal pronouns and kuka “who” (http://scripta.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=1221, http://scripta.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=1226)
Examples
- [fi] näen hänet “I see him/her”
- [fi] kenet näet? “who do you see?”
Gen
: genitive
Examples
- [fi] meidän perheemme “our family”
- [fi] vuoden päivät “the days of the year”
- [fi] Turun Yliopisto “University of Turku”
Ins
: instructive
Instructive primarily characterizes manner or instrument. Instructive can also express place or time.
Corresponds to some uses of English by means of or with the aid of.
Examples
- [fi] kaksin käsin “with both hands”
- [fi] uusin säännöin “with new rules”
- [fi] näillä seuduin “around these parts”
- [fi] vuoroviikoin “every other week”
References
- http://scripta.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=1263 (in Finnish)
Par
: partitive
In Finnish the partitive case is an object case that can also express indefinite quantity or unfinished actions.
Examples
- [fi] kolme taloa “three houses”
- [fi] rakastan tätä taloa “I love this house”
- [fi] saanko lainata kirjaa “can I borrow a book”
- [fi] lasissa on maitoa “there is (some) milk in the glass”
- [fi] ammuin karhua “I shot at a bear”
- [fi] luen kirjaa “I am reading a book”
References
- http://scripta.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=1234 (in Finnish)
Ess
: essive
Essive is typically a case of temporal adverbials (e.g. tiistaina “on Tuesday”). In expressions of state, essive is a case of predicative adverbials, characterizing purpose or task (e.g. vartijana “as a guard”) in intransitive forms, and how an object or its purpose is perceived in transitive forms (e.g. syödä raakana “eat raw”).
Essive corresponds to some uses of English as a.
Examples
- [fi] tiistaina “on Tuesday”
- [fi] vartijana “as a guard”
References
- http://scripta.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=1258 (in Finnish)
Tra
: translative
In intransitive sentences, the translative case typically expresses change of state (becomes, changes to) or manner.
Examples
- [fi] pitkäksi “become long”
- [fi] englanniksi “in/into English”
- [fi] kello kuudeksi “by six o’clock”
- [fi] huviksi “for fun”
In transitive sentences, the translative case describes the sentence object.
Examples
- [fi] tarkoitettu varoitukseksi “meant as a warning”
- [fi] valittiin presidentiksi “elected as president”
References
- http://scripta.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=1259 (in Finnish)
Com
: comitative / associative
The comitative (also called associative) case expresses belonging, a social relationship or a part of an entity. It often corresponds to English together with and has a descriptive or explicative function.
Examples
- [fi] tavaroineen “with his/her belongings”
- [fi] puolisoineen “with his/her spouse”
- [fi] koirat suurine hampaineen “dogs with their big teeth”
References
- http://scripta.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=1264 (in Finnish)
Abe
: abessive
The abessive case expresses wihtout what something has happened and roughly corresponds to the English preposition without.
Examples
- [fi] rahatta “without money”
Ine
: inessive
The inessive case expresses location inside of something.
Examples
- [fi] talossa “in the house”
Ill
: illative
The illative case expresses direction into something.
Examples
- [fi] taloon “to the house”
Ela
: elative
The elative case expresses direction out of something.
Examples
- [fi] talosta “from the house”
Ade
: adessive
The adessive cases expresses location on the outer or upper surface of an entity, or movement to/from such a surface. The corresponding directional cases are allative (towards something) and ablative (from something).
(Note: this is a very incomplete listing of the uses of the Finnish adessive, which can also express place, time, state, owner, instrument, means, manner, and quantity.)
Examples
- [fi] pöydällä “on the table”
References
- http://scripta.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=1252 (in Finnish)
All
: allative
The allative case expresses direction onto something (destination is adessive).
Examples
- [fi] pöydälle “on to the table”
Abl
: ablative
Prototypical meaning: direction from some point.
Examples
- [fi] pöydältä “from the table”
- [fi] katolta “from the roof”
- [fi] rannalta “from the beach”
Notes
: distributive
Some descriptions of Finnish recognize a distributive case conveying
that something happens to every member of a set, one at a time. UD
Finnish does not include Dis
(distributive) as a possible value of
the Case
feature, but analyses the -ttain suffix as an adverbial
derivation.
Examples
- [fi] kaupungeittain “separately in each city”
References
- http://scripta.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=379 (in Finnish)
Lat
: lative
Some descriptions of Finnish mark the base form of the first
infinitive as being in the lative case (see e.g.
Omorfi tagger documentation).
The Finnish UD treebanks follow ISK in not recognizing the lative case,
with the exception of FinnTreeBank, which currently marks this form as Case=Lat
.
Examples
- [fi] nukkuu “to sleep”
References
- http://scripta.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=120 (esp. Huom 1; in Finnish)
Diff
FinnTreeBank (FI_FTB) marks the base form of the first infinitive as lative in contrast to translative.
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]