Locative Cases
The most important function of the locative cases is to indicate location. They are also used for miscellaneous case government, much like prepositions in other languages. For example, the suffix -lla as a locative means "on top", but may function as an instrumental case, e.g. kirjoitan kynällä "I write with a pen".
Two different kinds of suffixes are used, the internal locatives (-s-) and the external locatives (-l-).
The word in a locative case refers to the verb, for example, in Sovitan housuja ikkunassa the word ikkunassa "in the window" refers to the verb sovitan "I try on", not to the adjacent noun housuja "pants". The sentence reads out as "I'm in the window, trying on pants". However, in context due to the instrumental nature of the window and the word order, the sentence stands for "I'm trying on pants (on display) in the window".
Read more about this topic: Finnish Noun Cases
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