The dative, however, contrasts with the accusative case, which is used to indicate motion toward a place (it has an allative meaning). The locative case had merged with the dative in early Germanic times and was no longer distinct in Proto-Germanic or in any of its descendants. Some early texts, in particular Homer, retain the locative in some words (for example ἠῶθεν, ēôthen – at dawn, Iliad 24.401). The dative with the preposition ἐν en 'in' and the dative of time (e.g., τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ, tēî trítēi hēmérāi, which means 'on the third day') are examples of locative datives. In Ancient Greek, the locative merged with the Proto-Indo-European dative, so that the Greek dative represents the Proto-Indo-European dative, instrumental, and locative. 'He is at home' can be expressed by '(is) domi est' using the locative, but 'They are at their (individual and separate) homes' cannot be expressed by the locative. The locative cannot express being located at multiple locations plural forms only exist because certain proper names such as Athēnae happen to be plural. Brundisium, Brindisi Eborācum, York with locatives Brundisiī, at Brindisi Eborācī, at York. There are also a number of second declension names that could have locatives, e.g. These plural names also use the form similar to the dative and ablative: Athēnīs, at Athens, and Cūmīs, at Cumae. A few place-names were inherently plural, even though they are a single city, e.g. The first declension locative is by far the most common, because so many Roman place names were first declension, such as Roma, Rome, and therefore use the same form as the genitive and dative: Romae, at Rome, and Hiberniae, in Ireland. There are a few nouns that use the locative instead of a preposition: domus becomes domī (at home), rūs becomes rūrī (in the country), humus becomes humī (on the ground), militia becomes militiae (in military service, in the field), and focus becomes focī (at the hearth at the center of the community). Britannia was also considered to be a 'large island'. The Romans considered all Mediterranean islands to be small except for Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Crete, and Cyprus. The Latin locative case was only used for the names of cities, 'small' islands and a few other isolated words. Therefore, both forms 'rūrī' and 'rūre' may be encountered. In archaic times, the locative singular of third declension nouns was still interchangeable between ablative and dative forms, but in the Augustan Period the use of the ablative form became fixed. For first and second declension, it was identical to the genitive singular form. The original locative singular ending, descended from the Old Latin form, remained in use for a few words. Originally like the dative, but gradually replaced with the ablative.īecause the locative was already identical to the ablative (which had a 'location' meaning as well) in the plural, the loss of distinction between the endings eventually caused the functions of the locative case to be absorbed by the ablative case in Classical Latin. In Classical Latin, changes to the Old Latin diphthongs caused the originally-distinctive ending of the locative singular to become indistinguishable from the endings of some other cases. The locative plural was already identical to the dative and ablative plural. Old Latin still had a functioning locative singular, which descended from the Proto-Indo-European form. (Mostly uncommon, archaic or literary) use in certain modern Indic languages (such as Bangla and Marathi-in which, however, a separate ablative case has disappeared).some classical Indo-European languages, particularly Sanskrit and Old Latin.modern Balto-Slavic languages, except Bulgarian and Macedonian, although it is mostly used with prepositions in the other Slavic languages.In most later Indo-European languages, the locative case merged into other cases (often genitive or dative) in form and/or function, but some daughter languages retained it as a distinct case. The endings are reconstructed as follows:

The Proto-Indo-European language had a locative case expressing 'place where', an adverbial function. The locative case exists in many language groups. The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the lative and separative case. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions 'in', 'on', 'at', and 'by'. In grammar, the locative case ( / ˈ l ɒ k ə t ɪ v/ LOK-ə-tiv abbreviated LOC) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. ( Learn how and when to remove this message) Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used. This article should specify the language of its non-English content, using for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code.

Loc russian transliteration