delative

Delative is a grammatical case or postposed nominal marker found in some languages, used to signal origin or starting point. It is commonly associated with meanings like from, off, or away from a source, and can convey nuances such as movement away from a location or the point from which a state or action derives. In many languages that have it, the delative is part of a broader system of locative cases that encode various spatial relations, often contrasting with related cases that mark inside, out of, onto, or from a broader source.

Occurrence and form can vary by language. The delative is most often discussed in the context of Finnic and other Uralic languages, where descriptive grammars describe a delative-type function within the larger locative paradigm. The exact morphological shape—such as a suffix attached to nouns or other inflectional strategies—differs across languages. Some language studies treat the delative as a distinct case, while others describe it as a functional or semantic variant of an adjoining locative form.

Usage and interpretation may extend beyond concrete space. In addition to literal movement, the delative can mark the origin of a change of state or derivation from a source, and may interact with verbs of motion, transfer, or possession. The precise semantic range depends on the language and its grammatical system, but the core idea remains: the delative identifies where something comes from or originates.

See also: locative cases, elative, illative, ablative, allative.