Locative

Locative is a grammatical category that marks location or the place where an action occurs. It can be expressed as a case, a postposed clitic, or a prepositional phrase, depending on the language. Locative meanings cover static location (where something is) as well as the locus of events or activities.

In many languages, the locative is realized as part of a larger local or spatial system. Some languages use a dedicated locative case, while others rely on prepositions or postfixed suffixes to indicate location. For example, Turkish expresses location with suffixes such as -de/-da (in/at/on) attached to nouns, as in evde “at home.” Finnish commonly uses suffixal forms in locative-like functions, such as talossa “in the house.” In Russian, location is typically conveyed by prepositional phrases with the preposition v "in/at" plus a noun in the appropriate case, serving a similar locative function even though a distinct “locative” case is not the term routinely used in modern grammar.

Across languages the locative is often described in relation to other local cases or directional postures, such as illative (into), allative (onto/onto a location), or ablative (away from a location). Some historical traditions, such as Latin, did have a dedicated locativus for place names and certain expressions; many of those usages later merged with more general prepositional expressions in daughter languages.

In English, locative meaning is typically expressed with prepositions such as in, on, and at. The study of locatives crosses phonology, morphology, and syntax, highlighting how languages encode spatial information and how such encodings interact with semantics and discourse.