Vietininkas

Vietininkas, or the locative case, is one of the seven grammatical cases in Lithuanian. It is used to express location or position and typically answers the question where? It governs nouns, adjectives and pronouns in phrases that denote place, such as a city, a building, a water body or a general area. The locative often appears with prepositions that convey location and is common in descriptive and narrative contexts.

In modern Lithuanian, vietininkas forms differ for singular and plural and vary by noun declension. Typical singular examples include mieste (in the city), namie (in the house), upėje (in the river), and kelyje (on the road). In the plural, locative forms are used as well, for instance miestuose (in the cities), namuose (in the houses), upėse (in the rivers), and keliuose (on the roads).

The locative is primarily used to express location rather than means or instrument, which are handled by other cases such as the instrumental. It coexists with other cases and often interacts with prepositional phrases to specify place. Its usage is productive in standard Lithuanian but can be particularly prominent in descriptive writing and place-naming.

Historically, the vietininkas stems from older Baltic grammatical systems and remains an integral part of contemporary Lithuanian grammar. It is distinguished from the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and vocative by its function of signaling location and its specific set of endings that vary by noun class and number.