In Uralic languages

Uralic languages

The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...

, such as Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

, Estonian

Estonian language

Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...

 and Hungarian

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

, the adessive case (abbreviated ; from Latin adesse "to be present") is the fourth of the locative cases

Declension

In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...

 with the basic meaning of "on". For example, Estonian laud (table) and laual (on the table), Hungarian asztal and asztalnál (at the table). It is also used as an instrumental case

Instrumental case

The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...

 in Finnish.

In Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

, the suffix is -lla/-llä, e.g. pöytä (table) and pöydällä (on the table). In addition, it can specify "being around the place", as in koululla (at the school including the schoolyard), as contrasted with the inessive koulussa (in the school, inside the building).

In Estonian, the ending -l is added to the genitive case

Genitive case

In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...

, e.g. laud (table) - laual (on the table). Besides the meaning "on", this case is also used to indicate ownership. For example, "mehel on auto" means "the man owns a car".

As the Uralic languages don't possess the verb "to have", it is the subject in the adessive case + on (for example minulla on= I have, literally at me is)
The other locative cases in Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are:

• Inessive case
  Inessive case
  Inessive case is a locative grammatical case. This case carries the basic meaning of "in": for example, "in the house" is "talo·ssa" in Finnish, "maja·s" in Estonian, "etxea·n" in Basque, "nam·e" in Lithuanian and "ház·ban" in Hungarian.In Finnish the inessive case is typically formed by adding...
  
   ("in")
• Elative case
  Elative case
  See Elative for disambiguation.Elative is a locative case with the basic meaning "out of"....
  
   ("out of")
• Illative case
  Illative case
  Illative is, in the Finnish language, Estonian language and the Hungarian language, the third of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "into ". An example from Hungarian is "a házba"...
  
   ("into")
• Allative case
  Allative case
  Allative case is a type of the locative cases used in several languages. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages which do not make finer distinctions.-Finnish language:In the Finnish language, the allative is the fifth of the locative cases, with the...
  
   ("onto")
• Ablative case
  Ablative case
  In linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ...
  
   ("off")

Finnish

The Finnish adessive has the word ending -lla or -llä (according to the rules of vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....

). It is usually added to nouns and associated adjectives.

It is used in the following ways.

• Expressing the static state of being on the surface of something.

Possible English meanings of on, on top of, atop

kynä on pöydällä the pen is on the table

• As an existential clause
  Existential clause
  Existential clauses are clauses that indicate only an existence. In English, they are formed with the dummy subject construction with "there", e.g. "There are boys in the yard". Many languages do not require a dummy subject, e.g. Finnish, where the sentence Pihalla on poikia is literally "On the...
  
  with the verb olla (to be) to express possession

This is the Finnish way to express the English verb to have

Meillä on koira we have a dog ('on our (possession, responsibility, etc.) is dog')

• Expressing the instrumentive use of something

Possible English meanings of with, by, using

Hän meni Helsinkiin junalla he went to Helsinki by train

Hän osti sen eurolla he bought it for one euro

• In certain time expressions expressing the time at which things take place

Possible English meanings of during in over

aamulla in the morning keväällä in the spring

• Expressing the general proximity in space or time at which something takes place (where the more specific proximity case would be the inessive)

Possible English meaning of at

poikani on koululla my son is at school (c.f. hän on koulussa he is inside the school)

hän on ruokatunnilla he is at lunch - literally on the lunch hour (c.f. hän teki läksyt ruokatunnissa he did the homework in [the period of] lunch hour

(Although not strictly a use of the adessive this proximity difference is mirrored in adverbial forms such as täällä - around here and tässä - right here)

• In certain expressions expressing mood

Janne oli huonolla tuulella Janne was in a bad mood