Inessivi

Inessivi is a term used in linguistics to refer to the inessive, a locative grammatical case that marks being inside a space or object. The plural form or plural-focused discussions of this case are sometimes described using the label inessivi, though in English-language grammar the standard term is the inessive and the plural forms are discussed as the plural inessive forms.

The best-known instance of an inessive system is found in Finnish, where the inessive expresses location inside something. In Finnish, the inessive is typically formed with the suffixes -ssa or -ssä, which follow vowel harmony rules. Examples include talossa meaning “in the house,” and koulussa meaning “in the school.” The plural forms follow the corresponding plural endings, as in taloissa meaning “in the houses,” and kouluissa meaning “in the schools.” The inessive is one of several locative cases in Finnish, a system that also includes ellative, adessive, allative, and others, each signaling different spatial relations.

Outside Finnish, related languages in the Finnic and broader Uralic family have analogous locative cases, though the exact morphology varies by language. In many linguistic descriptions, the term inessive is used to describe this general function, while inessivi may appear in some grammars or glossaries as a plural or terminology variant.

See also: locative case, Finnish language, Finnic languages, grammatical case.