This term can be used in languages where nouns have a declensional form that appears exclusively in combination with certain prepositions.
The so-called "second locative" found in modern Russian has ultimately the same origin.
Note however that many nouns no longer exhibit distinct prepositional case forms in the conversational language.
For example, in English, prepositions govern the objective (or accusative) case, and so do verbs.
Nominals in Sindhi can take a “contracted” oblique form which may be used in ergative, dative, or locative constructions without a postposition, or a “full” oblique case ending expressed when forming a postpositional phrase.