Ingrammar, theprolative case (abbreviatedPROL), also called thevialis case (abbreviatedVIA),prosecutive case (abbreviatedPROS),traversal case,mediative case, ortranslative case,[1] is agrammatical case of anoun orpronoun that has the basic meaning of "by way of" or "via".
InFinnish, the prolative case follows an established application in a number of fossilized expressions to indicate "by (medium of transaction)".[2] It can be used in other constructions, but then it does not sound "natural".[3] Examples would be "postitse" ("by post"), "puhelimitse" ("by telephone"), "meritse" ("by sea"), "netitse" ("over the Internet"). A number of Finnish grammarians classify the prolative form as anadverb because it does not requireagreement with adjectives like other Finnish cases.[4] This claim is not true, however, because an adjective will agree with the prolative: "Hän hoiti asian pitkitse kirjeitse" ("He/she dealt with the matter by way of a long letter").[citation needed]
The prolative exists in a similar state in theEstonian language.
Thevialis case inEskimo–Aleut languages has a similar interpretation, used to express movement using a surface or way. For example, in theGreenlandic languageumiarsuakkut 'by ship'[5] or inCentral Alaskan Yup'ikkuigkun 'by river' orikamrakun 'by sled'.
Basque grammars frequently list thenortzat / nortako case (suffix-tzat or-tako) as "prolative" (prolatiboa).[6] However, the meaning of this case is unrelated to the one just described above for other languages and alternatively has been called "essive /translative",[7] as it means "for [something else], as (being) [something else]"; e.g.,hiltzat eman "to give up for dead",lelotzat hartu zuten "they took him for a fool".[8] The meaning "by way of" of the case labelled prolative in the above languages is expressed in Basque by means of theinstrumental (suffix-[e]z).
This case is also called theprosecutive case in some languages.[1] It is found under this name inTundra Nenets,[9] in OldBasque and, with spatial nouns, in Mongolian.[10]