Livonian nouns are generally declined in eight cases (nominative, genitive, dative, partitive, instrumental, illative, inessive, and elative). Certain nouns can also be declined in four other cases (allative, adessive, ablative, and instructive). Nouns in the language can either be singular or plural, and unlike in many Indo-European languages, there is no grammatical gender in Livonian. This means not only that a word, such as student (student), can refer to both a male or female student, but also that there is no gender distinction in third person pronouns in Livonian. Thus ta is both "he" and "she". To learn more about the cases and their use, refer to the section on noun cases in Livonian. Below are examples of several words declined in the eight productive cases of the language.
Few words are declined in the three external locative cases, the adessive, allative, and ablative. Today these cases are used with certain placenames, as in the example below, which is given in the singular.
In his survey of Livonian phonology and syntax (Vääri 272), Eduard Vääri gives the following example for the use of the plural instructive case, a case that cannot be formed for all nouns. Responding to the question "how?", this example of the instructive translates as "on foot", in English. Unlike the three external locative cases, the instructive does not appear in any of the more contemporary materials intended for students of the language.
