elativeplural

Elativeplural is a grammatical form in certain languages that combines the elative case, which marks origin or movement from a source, with plural marking on the noun. It is encountered in languages that explicitly inflect nouns for both number and case, often within agglutinative or heavily inflected systems. In such languages, the elative plural can be formed by applying the elative suffix to a plural noun, by applying the plural suffix to a noun already carrying the elative suffix, or by a combination that results from language-specific phonology and morphology. The exact form and order of affixes vary by language.

Turkish provides a clear illustration of the elative plural: evlerden means “from the houses.” Here ev is house, with the plural suffix -ler forming evler, and the elative suffix -den attaches to the plural to yield evlerden. In Finnish, taloista conveys a similar idea in plural contexts: talo means house, talot is the plural, and -ista/-istä functions together with plurality to express “from the houses.” Estonian likewise forms majadest as “from the houses,” combining plural nativeness with the elative suffix.

Uses and semantics of elativeplural align with expressions of origin, source, or movement from multiple entities. Its presence highlights how a language encodes both number and origin within a single noun phrase. In linguistic descriptions, elativeplural is often discussed as a practical outcome of combining case and number morphology, rather than as a separate universal category. Its manifestations are language-specific, and not all languages with elative cases have a distinct or productive elative plural in everyday speech.