Elative case

In grammar, the elative case (abbreviated ELA; from Latin efferre "to bring or carry out") is a locative grammatical case with the basic meaning "out of".

Usage

Uralic languages

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

"talosta" - "out of the house, from the house" (Finnish "talo" = "house")
"majast" - "out of the house, from the house" (Estonian "maja" = "house")
"házból" - "out of the house" (Hungarian "ház" = "house")

In some dialects of colloquial 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".

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

Other locative cases are:

• Inessive case ("in")
• Illative case ("into")
• Adessive case ("on")
• Allative case ("onto")
• Ablative case ("off")
• Delative case ("off of a surface")

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.