Prepositional case

Prepositional case

Prepositional case is a grammatical case that marks the object of a preposition. This term can be used in languages where nouns have a declensional form that appears "exclusively" in combination with certain prepositions. For example, in Russian and Polish, the case that appears with (non-directional) uses of the prepositions "na", "v", "pri", "o" (roughly, "on", "in", "near", "about") is traditionally referred to as the prepositional case (Russian: предложный падеж, "predlózhniy padézh").

Because the objects of these prepositions often denote locations, this case is also sometimes called the "locative case": Czech and Slovak "lokál" (as opposed to "lokatív"), "miejscownik" in Polish. This is in concord with its etymology: the Slavic prepositional case hails from the Proto-Indo-European locative case (present in Armenian, Sanskrit, and Old Latin, among others). Small rudimentary traces of locative case are also present in Russian - the prepositional case of several oldest language's nouns with "in/on" prepositions differs from the same case form of the same nouns with another prepositions, like "в лесу"="in the forest", but "о лесе"="about the forest" - the first form is locative, the second is prepositional. For most words, including all borrowed words, locative case is merged to prepositional case - like "в машине" and "о машине".

In Scottish Gaelic, nouns that are the objects of (most) prepositions may be marked with prepositional case, especially if preceded by the definite article. In traditional grammars, and in scholarly treatments of the early language, the term "dative" case is incorrectly used for the prepositional case. This case is exclusively associated with prepositions. However not all prepositions trigger prepositional case marking, and a small group of prepositions which are termed "compound" mark their objects with genitive case, these prepositions being historically derived from the fusion of a preposition plus a following noun which has become grammaticalised. (Compare English "in front of", "because of".) Note however that many nouns no longer exhibit distinct prepositional case forms in the conversational language.

In the Pashtu language there also exists a case that occurs only in combination with certain prepositions. It is more often called the "second oblique" than the prepositional.

In many other languages, the term "prepositional case" is inappropriate, since the forms of nouns selected by prepositions also appear in non-prepositional contexts. For example, in English, prepositions govern the objective (or accusative) case, and so do verbs. In German, prepositions can govern the genitive, dative, or accusative, and none of these cases are exclusively associated with prepositions.

ee also

* Prepositional pronoun

External links

* [http://www.russian-resources.info/links.aspx/grammar/nouns/prep Resources to learn Prepositional Case in Russian]


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