Ablative case

In linguistics, the ablative case is a noun case found in several languages, including Armenian, Latin, Sanskrit and in the Finno-Ugric languages.

The Latin ablative combines the functions of the Indo-European ablative (indicating "from"), instrumental (indicating "with" or "by"), and locative (indicating "in") cases. From these original meanings several others developed, including the ablative of cause (indicating "caused by"), the ablative of time (indicating "at the time of", deriving from the locative), and the ablative absolute.

In Finnish, the ablative case is the sixth of the locative cases with the meaning "from off of", e.g. pöytä — pöydältä "table — off from the table". It is an outer locative case, used just as the adessive and allative cases to denote both being on top of something and "being around the place" (as opposed to the inner locative case, the elative, which means "from out of" or "from the inside of").

The other locative cases in Finnish are:

• Inessive case ("in")
• Elative case ("out of")
• Illative case ("into")
• Adessive case ("on")
• Allative case ("onto")