The ending "-ni," a productive morpheme which can be affixed to Swahili nouns, has been called the "locative" by most grammarians. While the author does not object to this term, he does not agree with Sacleux and Seidel, who call it a case. In some Indo-European and Altaic languages, the author argues, the locative is a case in the proper sense of the word. It is not, for example, a nominative or accusative. In other words, a noun in the locative case can never be used with subject or object function, only with adverbial function. Instances of the use of "-ni" as subject, object, and in prepositional and adverbial expressions are pointed out. (AMM)