Inelative Case¶
A grammatical case marking movement from inside a bounded source, with language-specific extensions such as Lezgian 'in return for'.
Core Idea¶
The inelative case packages an interior-source path into nominal morphology: a figure begins inside a bounded ground and moves outward across its boundary. It is best understood within a spatial case paradigm that also distinguishes location inside and movement into an interior.
Lezgian attests the category and also uses it in an extended 'in return for' sense. Translation by English 'out of' is only a gloss; case identity depends on the language's morphological form and paradigmatic contrasts.
Scope of Application¶
- Morphology. Describes a case exponent in nominal inflection.
- Spatial semantics. Models an interior-source path.
- Language description. Documents Lezgian form and extended uses.
- Typology. Compares source cases across spatial paradigms.
Clarity¶
Name the language, case form, figure, bounded ground, path direction, and paradigm contrast. Mark exchange-like readings as conventional extensions and do not infer the category from an English gloss alone. Inclusion test: Include inflected nominal forms whose grammatical case conventionally encodes emergence from a bounded interior, plus documented extensions of that case in the language. Exclusion test: Exclude static 'in', motion 'into', motion from a surface or vicinity, English prepositional phrases with no case morphology, and any source marker called inelative only by loose translation. Nearest boundary: A general ablative can express 'from' but is a near-miss unless the language grammatically distinguishes interior source from other source relations. Exit condition: The category ends when morphology no longer marks the interior-source contrast or the alleged use belongs to a different case in that language. Common misclassifications: It is not static location inside a place. It is not motion into an interior. It is not every ablative or source expression. It is not an English preposition treated as inflection. Nearest named distinctions: Ablative: Usually marks source more generally without the interior distinction. Inessive: Marks being inside. Illative: Marks movement into an interior. Adposition 'out of': A translation equivalent, not necessarily grammatical case morphology.
Manages Complexity¶
One inflection compresses source, bounded interior, and outward direction. Paradigm comparison separates it from general ablative marking, while polysemy records how spatial grammar extends into exchange meanings.
Abstract Reasoning¶
- Identify the case-marked noun phrase.
- Establish the inflectional exponent.
- Map figure, ground, and path.
- Check the ground is construed as an interior.
- Contrast neighboring local cases.
- Classify nonspatial uses as documented extensions.
Knowledge Transfer¶
The figure–ground–path analysis transfers to other local case systems, but the inelative label transfers only where morphology grammaticizes interior-source meaning. Lezgian extensions do not automatically belong to every inelative system.
Relationships to Other Abstractions¶
Current abstraction Inelative Case Domain-specific
Parents (1) — more general patterns this builds on
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Inelative Case is a kind of Classification Prime
The inelative case is one classificatory value within a language's case system, sorting nominal forms by grammatical/semantic function.
Hierarchy path (1) — routes to 1 parentless root
- Inelative Case → Classification
Neighborhood in Abstraction Space¶
Inelative Case sits in a crowded region of the domain-specific corpus (31st percentile for distinctiveness): several abstractions share nearly its structure, so a description that fits it tends to fit its neighbors too.
Family — Coordinate Systems & Spatial Measures (29 abstractions)
Nearest neighbors
- Translative Case — 0.91
- Organic unity — 0.89
- Whitehead's point-free geometry — 0.89
- Mapping Cylinder — 0.88
- Heterotopia (space) — 0.88
Computed from structural-signature embeddings · 2026-10-08