This is a list of grammatical cases as they are used by various inflectional languages that have declension.
This list will mark the case, when it is used, an example of it, and then finally what language(s) the case is used in.
Location and movement Note: Most cases used for location and motion can be used for time as well.
Location Case Usage Example Found in Adessive case close near/at/by the house Estonian Finnish Hungarian Lezgian Lithuanian Livonian Tlingit Tsez Kven Antessive case anterior before the house Dravidian languagesS. Agesthialingom, Prakya Sreesaila Subrahmanyam, Dravidian Linguistics- V: (proceedings of the Seminar on Dravidian Linguistics- V), Page 275, 1976 - 582 pages, Google book search link quote: "(6) 'before' (antessive), (7) 'behind, ..." Apudessive case adjacent next to the house Tsez Inessive case inside inside the house Basque Erzya Estonian Lithuanian Finnish Hungarian Ossetic Tsez Kven Intrative case between between the houses Limbu Quechua Locative case location at/on/in the house Armenian (Eastern) Azeri Bengali Belarusian Bosnian Chuvash Croatian Czech Gujarati Hungarian Inari Sámi Inuktitut Japanese Kashmiri Latin (restricted) Latvian Lithuanian Manchu Northern Sámi Polish Quechua Russian Sanskrit Serbian Skolt Sámi Slovak Slovene Sorbian Tamil Telugu Tlingit Turkish Ukrainian Uzbek (Note: the case in Slavic languages termed the "locative case" in English is actually a prepositional case.) Pergressive case vicinity in the vicinity of the house Kamu Pertingent case contacting touching the house Tlingit Archi Postessive case posterior after the house Lezgian Agul Subessive case under under/below the house Tsez Superessive case on the surface on (top of) the house Hungarian Ossetic Tsez Finnish
Motion from Case Usage Example Found in Ablative case near or inside away from the house Albanian Armenian (Eastern) Armenian (Western) Azeri Chuvash Erzya Estonian Evenki Finnish Hungarian Inuktitut Japanese Latin Manchu Ossetic Quechua Tamil Sanskrit Tibetan Tlingit Tsez Turkish Uzbek Yukaghir Adelative case the vicinity from near the house Lezgian Delative case the surface from (the top of) the house Hungarian Finnish Egressive case marking the beginning of a movement or time beginning from the house Udmurt Elative case the interior out of the house Erzya Estonian Evenki Finnish Hungarian Kven Postelative case movement from behind from behind the house Lezgian
Motion to Case Usage Example Found in Allative case in Hungarian and in Finnish:the adjacencyin Estonian and in Finnish:the surface to the houseonto the house Erzya Estonian Finnish Hungarian Inuktitut Japanese Kashmiri Kven | Lithuanian Tamil Tlingit Tsez Turkish Tuvan Uzbek Illative case inside into the house Erzya Estonian Finnish Hungarian Inari Sámi Lithuanian Northern Sámi Skolt Sámi Tamil Tsez Kven Lative case near or inside to/into the house Erzya Finnish Quechua Tsez Turkish Sublative case the surface or below on(to) the house/under the house Hungarian Tsez Finnish Superlative case the top on(to) the house/on top of the house Northeast Caucasian languages: Bezhta Hinuq Tsez Terminative case marking the end of a movement or time as far as the house Chuvash Estonian Hungarian Japanese Quechua
Motion via Case Usage Example Found in Perlative case movement through or along through/along the house Evenki Tocharian A & B Warlpiri Yankunytjatjara Prolative case (= prosecutive case, vialis case) movement using a surface or way by way of/through the house Erzya Estonian (rare) Finnish (rare) Tlingit Greenlandic Inuktitut
Time Case Usage Example Found inAblative case specifying a time when and within E.g.: , "at that time"; , "within a few hours".Latin Armenian (Eastern) Armenian (Western) Finnish Turkish Kven Accusative case indicating duration of timeknown as the accusative of duration of time E.g.: , "for many years";, "for 200 years". Serbian Croatian Russian | Turkish Essive case used for specifying days and dates E.g.: , "on Monday";, "on the 6th of December". Finnish Estonian Kven Limitative case specifying a deadline E.g.: () "by 5:30 PM" Japanese Temporal case specifying a time E.g.: "at seven" or "at seven o'clock"; "at midnight"; "at Christmas". Hungarian Finnish (rare)
Chart for review for the basic cases interiorsurfaceadjacencystatefromElativeDelativeAblativeExessiveat/inInessiveSuperessiveAdessiveEssive(in)toIllativeSublativeAllativeTranslativeviaPerlativeProlative
Morphosyntactic alignment For meanings of the terms agent, patient, experiencer, and instrument, see thematic relation.
Case Usage Example Found in Absolutive case (1) patient, experiencer; subject of an intransitive verb and direct object of a transitive verb he pushed the door and it opened Basque Tibetan Absolutive case (2) patient, involuntary experiencer he pushed the door and it opened; he slipped active-stative languages Absolutive case (3) patient; experiencer; instrument he pushed the door with his hand and it opened Inuktitut Accusative case (1) patient he pushed the door and it opened Akkadian Albanian Arabic Armenian (Eastern) Armenian (Western) Azeri Bosnian Croatian Czech Erzya Esperanto Faroese Finnish German Greek Hungarian Icelandic Inari Sámi Japanese Latin Latvian Lithuanian Northern Sámi Polish Romanian Russian Sanskrit Serbian Skolt Sámi Slovak Slovene Ukrainian Georgian Yiddish Accusative case (2) direct object of a transitive verb; made from; about; for a time I see her Inuktitut Persian Turkish Serbo-Croatian Agentive case agent, specifies or asks about who or what; specific agent that is subset of a general topic or subject it was she who committed the crime; as for him, his head hurts Japanese, Mongsen AoDirect casedirect subject or object of a transitive or intransitive verbI saw her; I gave her the book.Scottish Gaelic many languages with Austronesian Alignment. Ergative case agent; subject of a transitive verb he pushed the door and it opened Basque Chechen Dyirbal Georgian Kashmiri Samoan Tibetan Tlingit Tsez Ergative-genitive case agent, possession he pushed the door and it opened; her dog Classic Maya Inuktitut Instructive means, answers question how? by means of the house Estonian (rare) Finnish Instrumental instrument, answers question using what? with the house Armenian (Eastern) Armenian (Western) Belarusian Bosnian Croatian Czech Evenki Georgian Japanese Kashmiri Latvian Lithuanian Polish Russian Sanskrit Serbian Slovak Slovene Tsez Ukrainian Yukaghir Instrumental-comitative case instrument, in company with the house Chuvash Hungarian Tlingit Nominative case (1) agent, experiencer; subject of a transitive or intransitive verb he pushed the door and it opened nominative–accusative languages (including marked nominative languages) Nominative case (2) agent; voluntary experiencer he pushed the door and it opened; she paused active languages Objective case (1) direct or indirect object of verb I saw her; I gave her the book. Bengali Chuvash Objective/Oblique (2) direct or indirect object of verb or object of preposition; a catch-all case for any situation except nominative or genitive I saw her; I gave her the book; with her. English Swedish Danish Norwegian Bulgarian Oblique case all-round case; any situation except nominative or vocative concerning the house Anglo-Norman Hindi Old French Old Provençal Telugu Tibetan Intransitive case (also called passive or patient case) the subject of an intransitive verb or the logical complement of a transitive verb The door opened languages of the Caucasus Ainu Pegative case agent in a clause with a dative argument he gave the book to him Azoyú Tlapanec
Relation Case Usage Example Found in Ablative case all-round indirect case concerning the house Albanian Armenian (Eastern) Armenian (Western) Sanskrit Inuktitut Kashmiri Latin Lithuanian Finnish Aversive case avoiding or fear avoiding the house Warlpiri Yidiny Benefactive case for, for the benefit of, intended for for the house Basque Quechua Telugu Tamil Caritative case because of presence or absence for want of a house Ngiyambaa Causal case because, because of because of the house Quechua Telugu Causal-final case efficient or final cause for a house Chuvash Hungarian Comitative case accompanied with with the house Dumi Ingush Estonian Finnish (rare) Inari Sámi Japanese Kashmiri Kven Northern Sámi Skolt Sámi Ossetic (only in Iron) Tibetan Dative case shows direction or recipient for/to the house Albanian Armenian (Eastern) Armenian (Western) Azeri Belarusian Bosnian Croatian Czech Erzya Faroese Georgian German Ancient Greek Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Inuktitut Japanese Kashmiri Latin Latvian Lithuanian Manchu Ossetic Polish Romanian Russian Sanskrit Scottish Gaelic Serbian Slovak Slovene Tsez Turkish Ukrainian Yiddish
The case classically referred to as dative in Scottish Gaelic has shifted to, and is sometimes called, a prepositional case. Distributive case distribution by piece per house Chuvash Hungarian Finnish Distributive-temporal case frequency daily; on Sundays Hungarian; Finnish Genitive case shows generic relationship, generally ownership, but also composition, reference, description, etc. of the house; the house's Akkadian Albanian Arabic Armenian (Eastern) Armenian (Western) Azeri Bengali Belarusian Bosnian Chuvash Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Erzya Estonian Faroese Finnish Georgian German Greek Hungarian Icelandic Inari Sámi Irish Japanese Kashmiri Latin Latvian Lithuanian Manchu Northern Sámi Norwegian PersianBehrang QasemiZadeh, Saeed Rahimi, Persian in MULTEXT-East Framework, 5th International Conference on NLP, FinTAL 2006 Turku, Finland, August 23–25, 2006 Proceedings Polish Romanian Russian Sanskrit Scottish Gaelic Serbian Skolt Sámi Slovak Slovene Swedish Tibetan Tsez Turkish Ukrainian Kven Ornative case endowment equipped with a house Dumi; Hungarian Possessed case passive possession the house is owned Tlingit | Turkish A sentence with possessed case noun always has to include a possessive case noun. Possessive case direct ownership owned by the house English Turkish Privative case lacking, without without a house Chuvash Kamu Martuthunira Wagiman Semblative/Similative case similarity, comparing that tree is like a house Wagiman Sociative case along with, together with (together) with the house Hungarian Ossetic Substitutive case substituting, instead of instead of him Archi
Semantics Case Usage Example Found in Partitive case used for amounts three (of the) houses Estonian Finnish Inari Sámi Russian Skolt Sámi Kven Prepositional case when adpositions modify the noun in/on/about the house Belarusian Czech Polish Russian Scottish Gaelic Slovak Ukrainian
This case is called lokál in Czech and Slovak, miejscownik in Polish, місцевий (miscevý) in Ukrainian and месны (miesny) in Belarusian; these names imply that this case also covers locative case. The prepositional case in Scottish Gaelic is classically referred to as a dative case. Vocative case used for addressing, with or without a preposition Hey, father!O father!Father! Albanian (rare) Belarusian (rare) Bulgarian Bosnian Croatian Czech Georgian Greek Hindi Irish Japanese (literary or poetic) Scottish Gaelic Manx Itelmen Kashmiri Ket Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Nivkh Polish Romanian Russian (rare) Sanskrit Scottish Gaelic Serbian Slovak (rare) Telugu Ukrainian Nahuatl
State