Allatiivist

Allatiivist is a term used in Finnish linguistics to describe the allative case and its inflected forms. The allative expresses direction toward a destination and is commonly rendered in English as to or toward. In Finnish, the typical allative form is created with the suffix -lle, as in koululle (to school) or talolle (to the house).

The primary function of the allative is to mark destination or recipient related to an action. It often appears with verbs of motion or transfer, indicating where someone or something is headed or who is the beneficiary of an action. For example, Annan kirjan opettajalle means I give the book to the teacher, with opettajalle (to the teacher) in the allative. The allative also forms plurals, such as taloille (to the houses) and kaupoille (to the shops).

In grammatical terms, the allative is one of several directional cases in Finnish and other Finnic languages, used to express spatial or social relations of direction, destination, and beneficiary. It is distinct from related cases like the illative (into) and elative (from), which encode different directional relations.

Cross-linguistically, a comparable allative function exists in other Finnic languages, often expressed with similar suffixes (for example, Estonian uses -le for a similar meaning). The term allatiivist is used in grammars to refer to this semantic and morphosyntactic package across related languages. See also translative and illative for contrastive directional cases.