llative

Llative is a grammatical case used in certain languages to indicate motion toward a location or into the interior of a referent. It is part of a broader locative system that encodes spatial relations such as location (the inessive), origin or exit (elative), contact or surface location (adessive and allative), and the direction toward a place (llative or illative). The exact name and form of the case vary by language and tradition: some grammars call it llative as a typological term, while others use illative to describe the same semantic field, especially in Finnic languages where the traditional term illative is common.

Morphology: In languages that employ a dedicated llative, the case is typically expressed by suffixes attached to the noun stem, often subject to vowel harmony and other phonological alternations. The shape of the suffix is not universal; a given noun may have different illative/llative endings depending on stem vowel quality and length. The llative generally answers the question toward where or into which place, and is used with verbs of motion or directional predicates.

Examples: In Finnish, the corresponding illative formation expresses movement into a place; talo (house) becomes taloon (into the house), kaupunki becomes kaupungiin (into the city). Other Finnic or Uralic languages may use different morphemes or postpositional strategies to express the same meaning.

See also: illative, inessive, elative, adessive, allative, locative, Uralic languages.