Adessive case

An adessive case (abbreviated ADE; from Latin adesse "to be present (at)": ad "at" + esse "to be") is a grammatical case generally denoting location at, upon, or adjacent to the referent of the noun; the term is used most frequently for Uralic studies. For Uralic languages, such as Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, it is the fourth of the locative cases, with the basic meaning of "on"—for example, Estonian laud (table) and laual (on the table), Hungarian asztal and asztalnál (at the table).^[1] It is also used as an instrumental case in Finnish.

For Finnish, the suffix is -lla/-llä, e.g. pöytä (table) and pöydällä (on the table). In addition, it can specify "being around the place", as in koululla (at the school including the schoolyard), as contrasted with the inessive koulussa (in the school, inside the building).

In Estonian, the ending -l is added to the genitive case, e.g. laud (table) - laual (on the table). Besides the meaning "on", this case is also used to indicate ownership. For example, "mehel on auto" means "the man owns a car".

As the Uralic languages don't possess the verb "to have", the concept is expressed as a subject in the adessive case + on (for example, minulla on, "I have", literally "at me is").

Look up adessive case in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The other locative cases in Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian are:

• Inessive case ("in")
• Elative case ("out of")
• Illative case ("into")
• Allative case ("onto")
• Ablative case ("off")
• Superessive case ("on top of, or on the surface of")