Essive-formal case

In the Hungarian language the essive-formal case combines the essive case and the formal case, and it can express the position, task, state (e.g. "as a tourist"), or the manner (e.g. "like a hunted animal").

The status of the suffix -ként in the declension system is disputed for several reasons. First, in general, Hungarian case suffixes are absolute word-final, while -ként permits further suffixation by the locative suffix -i. Second, most Hungarian case endings participate in vowel harmony, while -ként does not. For these reasons, many modern analyses of the Hungarian case system, starting with László Antal's "A magyar esetrendszer" (1961) do not consider the essive-formal to be a case.

On the other hand, it complies with the criteria set for Hungarian cases by modern descriptive grammars, namely that it can appear as a specific verb argument, such as in kezel (vmi)ként (’treat, handle as…’), viselkedik (vmi)ként (’behave as…’), végez (vmi)ként (’graduate as…’), elhelyezkedik (vmi)ként (’find employment as…’) etc.