Superessive case explained

In grammar, the superessive case (abbreviated) is a grammatical case indicating location on top of, or on the surface of something.^[1] Its name comes from Latin Latin: supersum, superesse: to be over and above. While most languages communicate this concept through the use of adpositions, there are some, such as Hungarian, which make use of cases for this grammatical structure.

An example in Hungarian: Hungarian: a könyvek'''en''' means "on the books", literally "the books-on".

In Finnish, superessive is a case in the adverbial cases category, that are productive only with a limited set of stems. The superessive is marked with the Finnish: -alla/-ällä ending. For example:

• Finnish: kaikkialla means "everywhere" ("everything-at")
• Finnish: täällä means "(at) here" (from Finnish: tämä - "this", "at this place")
• Finnish: muualla means "(at) somewhere else" (from Finnish: muu - "other", "other-at")

In Lezgian, the superessive case is marked with suffixes: Lezghian: sew-re-l 'on the bear'.^[2]

Notes and References

1. Web site: Mäkinen. Panu. Finnish Grammar - Adverbial Cases. users.jyu.fi. University of Jyväskylä. 6 March 2015.
2. p. 74. Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. A Grammar of Lezgian. Walter de Gruyter.