Prolative case

Prolative case

The prolative case (also vialis case) is a declension of a noun or pronoun that has the basic meaning of "by way of".

In the Finnish language, it has a highly restricted, almost fossilized meaning "by (medium of transaction)". For example, "postitse" ("by post"), "puhelimitse" ("by phone"), "meritse" ("by sea"), "netitse" ("over the Internet"). The prolative is considered more to be an adposition by some Finnish grammarians as a result of the fact that it does not show agreement on adjectives like the other Finnish cases.

The vialis case in Eskimo-Aleut languages has a similar interpretation, used to express movement using a surface or way. For example, "by way of or through the house".Fact|date=February 2007

Basque grammars frequently list the "nortzat / nortako" case (suffix "-tzat" or "-tako") as "prolative" ("prolatiboa") [Check for example: Ilari Zubiri and Entzi Zubiri's "Euskal Gramatika Osoa" (Bilbao: Didaktiker, 1995); the [http://www.habe.org/ikaslearengunea/pdf/Deklinabidea.pdf declension reference] at the website of the Basque Autonomous Government's Institute for Euskaldunization and Alphabetization of Adults (HABE); etc.] . However, the meaning of this case is unrelated to the one just described above for other languages and alternatively has been called "essive / translative" [Jon D. Patrick, Ilari Zubiri: "A Student Grammar of Euskara" (Munich: Lincom Europa, 2001) [http://linguistlist.org/issues/12/12-2831.html] ] , as it means "for [something else] , as (being) [something else] "; e.g., "hiltzat eman" "to give up for dead", "lelotzat hartu zuten" "they took him for a fool" [Examples (translated from Spanish) given in Luis Baraiazarra's "Diccionario 3000 Hiztegia" (available online at [http://www1.euskadi.net/hizt_3000/ euskadi.net] ), under the entry for Spanish "dar" [http://www1.euskadi.net/cgi-bin_m33/DicioIe.exe?Diccionario=CAS&Idioma=CAS&Codigo=7931] .] . The meaning "by way of" of the case labelled prolative in the above languages is expressed in Basque by means of the instrumental (suffix "- [e] z").

References


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