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There's the adessive case, which can be used to specify something is near a noun, but is there an opposite? Is there a case specifying a far distance from a noun? I'm including this case in my conlang whether there's a name for it or not, but it'd be nice to know what it's called.

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    Cases indicate movement relations like "towards", "away", but not evaluations like "near" or "far". Demonstratives do, however: the proximal indicates that something is near, and the distal indicates that something is far (the deictic center may be the speaker or the addressee, depending on the language).
    – user6726
    Jun 22, 2016 at 5:05
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    @user6726 I would disagree on that. What about nominative, ablative, accusative, dative, genitive, partitive? None of them (primarily) expresses movement, not even locality. And I wouldn't fight their status as cases (at least not for all of them). What exactly makes you think case can only indicate movement? Even if a case is about locality, there certainly are ones that do express local status such as "in" or "near" - for example the Finnish cases inessive and adessive that bytebuster mentioned express exactly that.
    – Natalie Clarius
    Jun 22, 2016 at 6:39
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    Additionally, an important criterion for something being a case is that is has a wide range of use that goes beyond its original, literal meaning. For example, Finnish elative (basic meaning: "out of something") is used when expressing feelings or thoughts, or allative (basic meaning: "on top of something", "near by" -> locality, but no movement) for ownership constructions (X has Y). ...
    – Natalie Clarius
    Jun 22, 2016 at 6:40
  • ... Without that extended meaning, there would be no good justification for a case to be classified as an actual case rather than just a postposition that has over time attached to the noun - this is, btw, one of the reasons why linguistis so heavily disagree on the question how large the case system of Hungarian is (claims range between five and over fourty). So even if a case originally does express some form of locality, for it to count as a case it usually has to fulfill quite a lot of other functions that go beyond a literal kind of local meaning.
    – Natalie Clarius
    Jun 22, 2016 at 6:40
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    @lemontree, you're right, I wasn't really trying to give an exhaustive characterization of what case is: it expresses relations, not values.
    – user6726
    Jun 22, 2016 at 16:18

2 Answers 2

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If this List of cases on Wikipedia is complete, then there is no name (yet) for a case which expresses location far away from something.
Probably there is just no language that would express this by case (but by use of pre- or postpositions instead); location near by something or movement away from something is a more frequent thing to say.

You could abuse the movement cases (if so, most suitably I'd say ablative or elative), this would then correspond to what @bytebuster suggested, but I'm still not too happy with that, because those cases are used for motion and not for location, so it wouldn't reflect the meaning properly and would, as bytebuster said, possibly clash with other cases that express actual movement away from something.

If it's only about terminology, why don't you just think of your own case name? I think "Distantive", "Remotative" or "Procultative" would sound not too bad ;)

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    "Deessive" would sound good, too.
    – Yellow Sky
    Jun 22, 2016 at 20:18
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There's a nice table drawn in the Wikipedia's page for Finnish locative system. You may find it useful.

| System || Entering              | Residing      | Exiting                  |
+--------++-----------------------+---------------+--------------------------+
| Inner  || "into" illative       | "in" inessive | "from in" elative        |
| Outer  || "onto" allative       | "on" adessive | "from at/on" ablative    |
| State  || "into as" translative | "as" essive   | "from being as" exessive |

Although it is not precisely what you need, your conlang may employ ablative or elative for this purpose (if you don't worry that "I'm away from home+ABL" would clash with "I'm leaving home+ABL").

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  • The table is nice, but doesn't really address the OP's problem: None of these cases would be used to indicate "far away from"; the outer right ones are used for movement away from something and the inner ones which are used for bing local to something don't have the right meaning ("in" or "on top of"/"near by", but not "far away from"). Also, exessive does no longer exist in Finnish; its meaning is now taken over by other cases, mostly elative.
    – Natalie Clarius
    Jun 22, 2016 at 6:41
  • -lative ('-carrying') implies movement; it looks to me like what OP is looking for would be abessive.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Jun 22, 2016 at 16:32
  • @StoneyB Isn't abessive more meant to be absent from something in a more abstract way, i.e. lacking something, rather than being locally absent/far away?
    – Natalie Clarius
    Jun 22, 2016 at 20:21
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    @lemontree Hmm ... how about proculessive, then?
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Jun 22, 2016 at 20:37
  • Never heard about that, and don't find anything on Google. Did you just invent that? Judging from its morphology, it should mean something like far.away+be? - sounds a bit like my suggestion "proculative" then ;)
    – Natalie Clarius
    Jun 22, 2016 at 20:56

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