Allative

Part of speech: adjective, noun

Definitions

1. A grammatical case indicating movement toward a location or direction; a form used to express the idea of reaching or approaching a specific place; a way to show a relationship involving an endpoint in spatial or abstract terms
2. A specific case in linguistics denoting the concept of coming to or going towards a particular destination; an inflectional form used to indicate the direction of movement in relation to nouns; a linguistic marker that signifies a goal or aim within an action
3. An expression in grammar representing the relationship of motion towards an object or location; a category that illustrates reaching, arriving, or directing actions to a point; a functional case that conveys spatial, and sometimes metaphorical, orientations in communication

Etymology: "Allative" is a grammatical term built from Latin pieces: "ad" meaning "to" or "toward," plus "lātus," the past participle of "ferre," "to carry," plus the adjectival suffix "-īvus." Put together, the name describes a case that "carries toward" something. The label was made for a grammatical category rather than inherited from ordinary speech, so its meaning is literal: the case marks movement to a place or goal. The idea behind the name is the one the word still expresses. Languages such as Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian use an allative ending on a noun to show that something is heading toward, or reaching, a location, so the term describes the function of that ending rather than a sense that drifted over time. Because the word was coined to name a grammatical function, its history is that of a deliberate technical formation.

Synonyms: directional case