Ablative case

The ablative case (sometimes abbreviated .mw-parser-output .smallcaps{font-variant:small-caps}abl) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns and adjectives in the grammar of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. The word 'ablative' derives from the Latin ablatus, the (irregular) perfect passive participle of auferre 'to carry away'. The ablative case is found in ancient languages such as Latin and Sanskrit, as well as modern languages like Turkish and Hungarian. There is no ablative case in modern Germanic languages such as German. There was an ablative case in Ancient Greek in the early stages of the language, which quickly fell into disuse by the classical period. The ablative case (sometimes abbreviated .mw-parser-output .smallcaps{font-variant:small-caps}abl) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns and adjectives in the grammar of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. The word 'ablative' derives from the Latin ablatus, the (irregular) perfect passive participle of auferre 'to carry away'. The ablative case is found in ancient languages such as Latin and Sanskrit, as well as modern languages like Turkish and Hungarian. There is no ablative case in modern Germanic languages such as German. There was an ablative case in Ancient Greek in the early stages of the language, which quickly fell into disuse by the classical period. The ablative case in Latin (cāsus ablātīvus) appears in various grammatical constructions, including following various prepositions, in an ablative absolute clause, and adverbially. The Latin ablative case was derived from three Proto-Indo-European cases: ablative (from), instrumental (with), and locative (in/at). In Ancient Greek, there was an ablative case αφαιρετική afairetikē which was used in the Homeric, pre-Mycenaean, and Mycenean periods. It fell into desuetude during the classical period and thereafter with some of its functions taken by the genitive and others by the dative; the genitive had functions belonging to the Proto-Indo-European genitive and ablative cases. The genitive case with the prepositions ἀπό apó 'away from' and ἐκ/ἐξ ek/ex 'out of' is an example. German does not have an ablative case (but exceptionally, Latin ablative case-forms were used from the 17th to the 19th century after some prepositions, for example after von in von dem Nomine: ablative of the Latin loanword Nomen). Grammarians at that time, such as Justus Georg Schottel, Kaspar von Stieler ('der Spate'), Johann Balthasar von Antesperg and Johann Christoph Gottsched, listed an ablative case (as the sixth case after nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative) for German words. They arbitrarily considered the dative case after some prepositions to be an ablative, as in von dem Mann ('from the man' or 'of the man') and mit dem Mann ('with the man'), while they considered the dative case after other prepositions or without a preposition as dem Mann to be a dative. There is some confusion in German culture about the Latin ablative and the German dative. The ablative case is found in Albanian; it is the fifth case, rasa rrjedhore. In Sanskrit, the ablative case is the fifth case (pañcamī) and has a similar function to that in Latin. Sanskrit nouns in the ablative often refer to a subject 'out of' which or 'from' whom something (an action, an object) has arisen or occurred: pátram taróḥ pátati 'the leaf falls from the tree'. It is also used for nouns in several other senses, as for actions occurring 'because of' or 'without' a certain noun, indicating distance or direction. When it appears with a comparative adjective, (śreṣṭhatamam, 'the best'), the ablative is used to refer to what the adjective is comparing: 'better than X'. The modern Armenian ablative has different markers for each main dialect, both originating from Classical Armenian. The Western Armenian affix -է -ē (definite -էն -ēn) derives from the classical singular; the Eastern Armenian affix -ից -ic’ (both indefinite and definite) derives from the classical plural. For both dialects, those affixes are singular, with the corresponding plurals being -(ն)երէ(ն) -(n)erē(n) and -(ն)երից -(n)eric’.