In grammar, the inessive case (abbreviated ; from "to be in or at") is a locative grammatical case. This case carries the basic meaning of "in": for example, "in the house" is in Finnish, in Estonian, () in Moksha, in Basque, in Lithuanian, in Latgalian and in Hungarian.

In Finnish the inessive case is typically formed by adding . Estonian adds to the genitive stem. In Moksha () is added (in Erzya ()). In Hungarian, the suffix is most commonly used for inessive case, although many others, such as and others are also used, especially with cities.

In the Finnish language, the inessive case is considered the first (in Estonian the second) of the six locative cases, which correspond to locational prepositions in English. The remaining five cases are:

• Elative case ("out of")

• Illative case ("into")

• Allative case ("onto")

• Adessive case ("on")

• Ablative case ("from")

Finnish

The Finnish language inessive uses the suffix or (depending on vowel harmony). It is usually added to nouns and associated adjectives.

It is used in the following ways:

• Expressing the static state of being in something.

  1. = we live in Finland

  (with time expressions) stating how long something took to be accomplished or done

• possible English translations include in, within

  1. = within 2 years, during 2 years

  when two things are closely connected

• English translations can include on in phrases of this type

  1. = N.N. on the phone

  2. = the ring is on my finger

  as an existensial clause with the verb (to be), to express possession of objects

  1. = the newspaper has 68 pages

  with the verb ,

  1. = I visit the bar

  There are both singular and plural forms

  1. = I visit the bars

Dialectal variants

In a large part of the southwestern, south Ostrobothnian, southeastern as well as in some Tavastian dialects, the suffix is simply -s (e.g. maas, talos), similarly to Estonian. This is an example of apocope. When coupled with a possessive suffix, the result can be like in standard Finnish "maassani, talossani" or a shorter "maasani, talosani" depending on the dialect: the former is more common in Tavastian and southeastern dialects while the latter is more common in southwestern dialects.

Most central and northern Ostrobothnian dialects as well as some southwestern and Peräpohjola dialects use a shorter suffix -sa/-sä, e.g. maasa, talosa.

Further reading

References