What is "inessive case"

n. (context grammar English): noun case used to indicate location '''inside''' something. In English, this is usually expressed by the prepositions "in" or "inside," as in "inside the house." Languages that use the inessive case include Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, and Erzya.

Inessive case ( abbreviated ; from Latin inesse "to be in or at") is a locative grammatical case. This case carries the basic meaning of "in": for example, "in the house" is "talo·ssa" in Finnish, "maja·s" in Estonian, "куд·са" (kud·sa) in Moksha, "etxea·n" in Basque, "nam·e" in Lithuanian, "sāt·ā" in Latgalian and "ház·ban" in Hungarian.

In Finnish the inessive case is typically formed by adding "ssa/ssä". Estonian adds "s" to the genitive stem. In Moksha, "са" (sa) is added. In Hungarian, the suffix "ban/ben" is most commonly used for inessive case, although many others, such as "on/en/ön" and others are also used, especially with cities.

In the Finnish language, the inessive case is considered the first (in Estonian the second) of the six locative cases, which correspond to locational prepositions in English. The remaining five cases are:

• Elative case ("out of")
• Illative case ("into")
• Adessive case ("on")
• Ablative case ("off")
• Allative case ("onto")