illativeallative

Illativeallative is a term used in linguistic typology to describe a hypothetical directional case that would combine the functions of illative (into) and allative (to/onto). Illative marks movement toward the interior of a referent, such as entering or passing into something, while allative marks movement toward a location or onto a surface. An illativeallative would encode both aspects in a single morpheme or syntactic marker, signaling that the destination is both interior to and oriented toward from the perspective of the referent, depending on the language and context.

In practice, illativeallative remains theoretical and is not widely attested as a productive category in natural languages. When languages have distinct illative and allative cases, they typically separate interior-inward movement from destination toward a place or surface. A proposed illativeallative would thus require either a fused morpheme that combines illative and allative meanings or a systematic compound of two markers. Its realization could be phonologically and morphologically diverse, varying from fusional to agglutinative patterns, and might be constrained by syntactic position or lexical morphology.

Typologically, such a merged case would be uncommon, but some languages with densely packed directional systems or historical mergers might be analyzed as exhibiting a functional illativeallative, especially in diachronic studies of case mergers or contact-induced simplifications. In current descriptions, researchers usually treat illative and allative as separate directions, with illativeallative discussed as a theoretical construct or a potential feature in reconstructed or highly synthetic systems.

See also: illative case, allative case, directional case, Finnish grammar.