Ablative case

In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced /ˈæbleɪtɪv/ AB-lay-tiv; abbreviated abl) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages. It is used to indicate motion away from something. In different languages it can additionally serve various other purposes, i.e. make comparisons (in Armenian). The word "ablative" derives from the Latin ablatus, the (suppletive) perfect, passive participle of auferre "to carry away".

The ablative case is found in several language families, such as Indo-European (e.g. Sanskrit, Latin, Albanian, Armenian, Punjabi), Turkic (e.g. Turkish, Turkmen, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar), Tungusic (e.g. Manchu, Evenki), Uralic (e.g. Hungarian), and the Dravidian languages. There is no ablative case in modern Germanic languages such as German and English. There was an ablative case in the early stages of Ancient Greek, but it 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 (ἀφαιρετικὴ πτῶσις aphairetikē ptōsis) which was used in the Homeric, pre-Mycenaean, and Mycenean periods. It fell into disuse during the classical period and thereafter with some of its functions taken by the genitive and others by the dative. 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 seventeenth to the nineteenth century after some prepositions, for example after von in von dem Nomine: ablative of the Latin loanword nomen. Grammarians at that time, Justus Georg Schottel, Kaspar von Stieler, 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 considered the dative case after some prepositions to be an ablative, as in von dem Mann[e] 'from the man, of the man' and mit dem Mann[e] 'with the man', while they considered the dative case after other prepositions or without a preposition, as in dem Mann[e], to be a 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 vṛkṣā́t 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’.