Talk:Ablative case

Untitled
What about the Ablative of Agent? Bayerischermann 01:53, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Finnish examples
The "lähteä kalalta/maidolta" expressions given for the Finnish examples sound somewhat dubious. You might say "lähteä kalasta" (elative, literally "go out of the fish") to mean "quit fishing". "Lähteä kalalta" sounds like you have been standing on the top of a fish and depart. With regard to drinks, ablative is more commonly used for drinks that you drink in a social context, ie. "lähteä kaljalta" (to leave from (drinking) beer, often to leave a bar) or "lähteä kahvilta" (to leave from (drinking) coffee, often to leave a cafe). Its use for drinks in general is in my opinion rare, particularly if the drinker is a person. You might say "lähteä maidolta" if you have been visiting someone's home for the purpose of drinking a glass of milk while socializing, or of a cat that departs from its platter of milk. Vuori 12:22, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

ablative in english?
english has, albeit rather archaic, some ablative too, n'est-ce pas? whence = from where also some dative. :)

whither = to where

opinions?


 * I think that's worthy of discussion in the article. I know it's been a little obnoxious for me not seeing many decent English examples of these grammatical cases in the English bloody articles, which for someone speaking English natively, who would, incidentally, be more likely to read the English translation of this page, would be far more accessible than (cough) Finnish and Turkish.  So I'm all for it. Dextrose (talk) 06:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * These are not cases. And where is not a noun, adjective or pronoun, so cannot have cases. Koro Neil (talk) 04:00, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Turkish examples
I'm not a fluent Turkish speaker, but it seems to me that "taşımaktan" ought to be "taşımadan:"
 * taşımak  = infinitive
 * taşıma   = verbal noun
 * -tan/-dan(/-ten/-den) = ablative case suffix, subject to consonant deformation (and vowel harmony)

Thus "taşımaktan" would be the ablative generated from the infinitive, which is a case I'm not sure even exists. Furthermore, taşımadan requires a little bit more explanation, because the use of the ablative here would be in the context of something like "kuvvetlenmeliyim onu tanışmadan önce," "I have to get stronger before I carry it." Essentially here, "tanışmadan önce" is used to express "from before the carrying of...." Another possible use of tanışmadan would be in the conversation,
 * "Kollarım acıyorlar." - "My arms hurt."
 * "Neden?"              - "Why?"
 * "Mobilyayı tanışmadan" - "From carrying furniture."

Tanışmak seems like a poor choice to demonstrate using the ablative case on a verb in any case, but I don't know enough Turkish to be sure of what I'm talking about so I'm not editing the page. Dextrose (talk) 06:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I asked my Turkish friend and she said that taşımaktan would indeed be used this way, as in "elim acıyor bunu taşımaktan" my hand hurts from carrying this. She couldn't exactly explain the usage, but "taşımadan önce" is a valid construction whereas "taşımadan" isn't quite valid as "from carrying."  I still say that the example requires more explanation, since it is a somewhat special case of the ablative. Dextrose (talk) 23:12, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

More Turkish
The ablative in Turkish (-den hali or uzaklaşma hali) is expressed through the suffixes -den, -dan, -ten, or -tan. Examples:

Ev - evden House - from/off the house

At - attan Horse - from/off the horse

Taşımak - taşımaktan To carry - from/off carrying

How would "Ateşten Gömlek" be translated? Fire is in the ablative case and shirt is in nominative case. Shirt from the fire? Thanks Mallerd (talk) 19:58, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

The inclusion as to exactly what this case is
Sadly this article, does not cover exactly what the case is used for. As a native English speaker, I can say, I did not understand (after having read the artice) what the case did. I understand the general cases accusative, dative, genative, nominative... But, from reading this article, I am still ignorant as to the meaning of the Ablative case. Regards, -- Île flottɑnte~Floɑting islɑnd   Talk  00:04, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
 * First sentence: "In grammar, ablative case (abbreviated abl) is a grammatical case (a type of noun inflection) in various languages that is used generally to express motion away from something," I would expect that to have been the starting point of the article in its original form. Covers it perfectly, I think.
 * The phrase "inclusion as to" is not native English. Koro Neil (talk) 03:57, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

List of languages that have it
It seems that this case is used in some Indo-European languages (like Latin) but not in others (like Greek). A list might be helpful here. Also, in Latin the ablative is often similar to the dative as regards the word form. Is the ablative a variant of the dative that some languages developed, or is it an old Indo-European phenomenon that was folded into the dative in some languages? Please add any such information you might have. -- 85.179.160.87 (talk) 01:09, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Proto-Indo-European is reconstructed as having a separate ablative case, which merged with other cases (locative and instrumental) in Latin, yes. Although the ablative and dative are still distinct cases in Classical Latin. They're only identical in the plural. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:21, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

ENGLISH???
Hello? This is an English article about a subject but has no examples in English? Someone needs to make this an article about English and not every OTHER language on Earth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.238.200.226 (talk) 17:30, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * You should read the first paragraph and learn that there is no ablative case in English. — Eru·tuon 04:51, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
 * No ablatives in greek or german apparently, but they're on the list! Perhaps a seperate section for languages with "ablative constructions" that includes English?203.173.28.77 (talk) 05:28, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

The OP's comments leave something to be desired, but would it be possible to get some French or Latin example sentences and then translate them into English so English speakers have a better understanding of how the case is used? Jplflyer (talk) 22:27, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Ablative in English?
Did English have an ablative case?

In German, words derived from Latin had an ablative case (as in "von dem Nomine" [Nomen], "von der Radice" [Radix], "von dem Corpore" [Corpus]), and grammarians also knew that there are 6 cases in German (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative; not just the first four), so for example did Schottel, Antesperg and Gottsched.

In "Thomas Coar: A Grammar of the English Tongue" (1796) 6 cases are mentioned for English, too: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative. So, did forms like "the nomen/Nomen" [nom. and acc.], "the nominis/Nominis" [gen., similar to English's "'s"], "to the nomini/Nomini" [dat.], "of the nomine/Nomine" [abl.] exist in English? Was there a real English vocative and ablative (in case of Latin words)? (nomen/Nomen maybe is a bad example as English had the words "name" and "noun" (i.e. substantive or adjective), but there are many other Latin words.) -19:17, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
 * No, English does not have an ablative case, and today only has nominative, oblique, and perhaps genitive cases in pronouns (he, him, his), not in nouns. English never had an ablative case, despite what Thomas Coar and other grammarians may claim; Old English only had four or five cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and sometimes instrumental. There were more cases in the earlier ancestor of English, Proto-Indo-European, but PIE is a different language from English. — Eru·tuon 21:24, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Well:
 * (a) Forms like "noun's" and "Peter's" are also considered to be genitives, at least by some. Thus one can say that there are 3 cases: 1. subject case or nominative [case], 2. object case or oblique [case], 3. genitive [case] or possessive [case]. (Some might have doubts as "the book of Peter" also expresses possession, but it's obviously object case, similar to German "das Buch von Peter" which is dative (- resp. ablative in older grammar books, and in case of Latin words this was distinct from dative as it was "von article Latin word in its ablative case")).
 * (b) Something like Latin-English ablatives can be found:
 * "Still others derive it from the Corpore Reticulari." -- Though: the Latin words are in italics (which could indicate that they are viewed as Latin and not as English words), and it's a translation (from German into English)
 * "considerable deductions, you will say, from the 'corpore sano.'" [Abl. of "corpus sanum" (healthy body)] -- Though: the Latin words are in ""
 * "If the mens sana seldom exists apart from the corpore sano, still more rarely is a healthy piety found in such isolation" -- italics again
 * "the nerve endings might take this blackish material from out of the corpore mucoso"
 * But such forms seem to be rare. -02:36, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Objective case only exists in pronouns. Saying nouns have objective case, but there's no case-ending to mark it, is like saying a bald man has hair, even though he's shaved it off, or that a lake has water when it's dried up.


 * Same with the ablative. The cases you quote are just adoption of a Latin grammatical feature into English: using Latin ablative forms after English prepositions that are translations of Latin prepositions that use the ablative (ex, de, ab, all translatable as "from"). And nobody is likely to do that anymore, because very few people learn Latin these days or know what Latin prepositions use the ablative. Besides, ablative is used in many more cases than before the preposition "from", but it would be strange if ablative were used in English in all the places where it's used in Latin: Die irae God will judge the world, with an ablative of time, and Mens sana is better corpore sano, with an ablative of comparison, sound weird and are incomprehensible to a normal English speaker.


 * The possessive  's is a clitic, not an inflectional suffix, because it comes after complex noun phrases: the King of England's crown, not the King's of England crown. I'm not sure if clitics are considered genitives or not. — Eru·tuon 18:21, 17 April 2015 (UTC)


 * What is more is that no Germanic language has an ablative case, nor did Proto-Germanic. That set phrases in Latin borrowed into English use the ablative case of course has nothing to do whatsoever with whether that case exists as a grammatical category in English. Calling the 's possessives genitives is simply an antiquated usage based on the idea that grammatical categories should so far as possible correspond to their closests Latin equivalents. The English 's does not correspond very well in function to the Latin genitive case. The same is the case with those who wish to use nominative and accusative to label the English subjective and objective cases, in spite of the fact that their usage and funcitons are different from the Latin cases (e.g. Objective case covers both the functions of Latin dative, ablative, accusative, and instrumental cases). 172.0.128.110 (talk) 19:21, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

off of
IN American English and some dialects of English elsewhere can be heard "I got off of the bus" NOT "I got off the bus". Is this an example of ablative case usage? Similarly we can find "He took it out of my hand" compared with "He took it out my hand". What form / case / declension is this IF this is not ablative? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.112.30.115 (talk) 04:56, 21 February 2021 (UTC)