Expressing the absence or lack of something, particularly used in linguistics to describe grammatical cases or constructions showing what is missing.
From Latin 'carere' (to lack, be without) plus the suffix '-itive'. This grammatical term developed in linguistic analysis to describe how certain languages mark the absence of objects or qualities.
Finnish and other Uralic languages have a caritive case that literally marks what you *don't have*—if you say 'I am without a pen,' that word order reveals how different languages can grammatically think about absence itself!
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