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In
grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...
, the comitative case (; abbreviated ) is a
grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In vari ...
that denotes accompaniment. In
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
, the preposition "with", in the sense of "in company with" or "together with", plays a substantially similar role (other uses of "with", like in the meaning of "using" or "by means of" (I cut bread with a knife), correspond to the
instrumental case In grammar, the instrumental case (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the ''instrument'' or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. The noun may be either a physical object or an ...
or related cases).


Core meaning

The comitative case encodes a relationship of "accompaniment" between two participants in an event, called the "accompanier" and the "companion". In addition, there is a "relator" (which can be of multiple lexical categories, but is most commonly an affix or adposition). Use of the comitative case gives prominence to the accompanier. This
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
sentence is an example: : /nowiki>''il professore''/nowiki>accompanier ''entra nell'aula'' /nowiki>''con''/nowiki>relator /nowiki>''i suoi studenti''/nowiki>companion :'the professor enters the lecture-hall (together) with his students'. In this case, ''il professore'' is the accompanier, ''i suoi studenti'' is the companion, and ''con'' is the relator. As the accompanier, ''il professore'' is the most prominent.
Animacy Animacy (antonym: inanimacy) is a grammatical and semantic feature, existing in some languages, expressing how sentient or alive the referent of a noun is. Widely expressed, animacy is one of the most elementary principles in languages around th ...
also plays a major role in most languages with a comitative case. One group of languages requires both the accompanier and the companion to be either human or animate. Another group requires both to be in the same category: both human or both animate. A third group requires an animate accompanier and an inanimate companion. Other languages have no restrictions based on animacy.


Comparison to similar cases

The comitative case is often conflated or confused with other similar cases, especially the
instrumental case In grammar, the instrumental case (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the ''instrument'' or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. The noun may be either a physical object or an ...
and the
associative case The associative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which expresses associativity which is, although related, not identical to comitativity, which is expressed by using the comitative case In grammar, the comitative case (; abbreviated ) is ...
. The comitative relates to an accompanier and a companion, and the instrumental relates to an
agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...
, an
object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...
, and a
patient A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by healthcare professionals. The patient is most often ill or injured and in need of treatment by a physician, nurse, optometrist, dentist, veterinarian, or other health c ...
. Enrique Palancar defines the role of Instrumental case as 'the role played by the object the Agent manipulates to achieve a change of state of the Patient.' Even though the difference is straightforward, because the instrumental and the comitative are expressed the same way in many languages, including
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
, it is often difficult to separate them. Russian is one of many languages that differentiate morphologically between instrumental and comitative: In Russian, the comitative is marked by adding a preposition ''s'' and by declining the companion in the instrumental case; the design ''с мамой'' as a whole becomes comitative. In the instrumental case, the object is declined, but no preposition is added. The comitative case is often confused with the associative case. Before the term comitative was applied to the accompanier-companion relationship, the relationship was often called associative case, a term still used by some linguists. It is important to distinguish between the comitative and the associative because the associative also refers to a specific variety of the comitative case that is used in Hungarian.


Expressions of comitative semantic relation

Grammatical case is a category of inflectional morphology. The comitative case is an expression of the comitative semantic relation through inflectional
affixation In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...
, by
prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...
es,
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
es and circumfixes. Although all three major types of affixes are used in at least a few languages, suffixes are the most common expression. Languages which use affixation to express the comitative include Hungarian, which uses suffixes;
Totonac The Totonac are an indigenous people of Mexico who reside in the states of Veracruz, Puebla, and Hidalgo. They are one of the possible builders of the pre-Columbian city of El Tajín, and further maintained quarters in Teotihuacán (a city wh ...
, which uses prefixes; and Chukchi, which uses circumfixes. Comitative relations are also commonly expressed by using
adpositions Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') ...
: prepositions, postpositions and circumpositions. Examples of languages that use adpositional constructions to express comitative relations are French, which uses prepositions; Wayãpi, which uses postpositions; and Bambara, which uses circumpositions. Adverbial constructions can also mark comitative relations, but they act very similarly to adpositions. One language that uses adverbs to mark the comitative case is Latvian. The final way in which comitative relations can be expressed is by serial-verb constructions. In these languages, the comitative marker is usually a verb whose basic meaning is "to follow". A language which marks comitative relations with serial-verb constructions is
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
.


Examples


Indo-European languages


French

French uses prepositions to express the comitative semantic relation. In this case, the preposition "avec" is used to express the comitative semantic relation. The preposition "avec" is the standard comitative marker in French; however, French has a special case, the
ornative case In linguistics, the ornative case is a noun case that means "endowed with" or "supplied with". This case is found in Dumi, which marks it by the suffix -''mi''. In Swahili, is the ornative case particle. It takes a prefix dependent on the nou ...
, a variety of comitative for bodily property or clothes. The French ornative marker is "à", as for example in the title of the novel and play ''
La Dame aux Camélias LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note * "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on ''Figure ...
'', “The lady with, or who wears, camelias.”


Latvian

In Latvian, both instrumental and comitative are expressed with the preposition ''ar'' However, it is used only when the companion is in accusative and singular or when it is in dative and plural. Otherwise the co-ordinating conjunction ''un'' is used. In the example above, ''ar'' is used because Rudolf, the companion, is in accusative and singular. Below, it is used in the other case that it is allowed, with a dative plural companion.


Uralic languages


Estonian

In Estonian, the Comitative (''kaasaütlev'') marker is the suffix “-ga”.


Finnish

In Finnish, the comitative case (''komitatiivi'') consists of the suffix ''-ne'' with adjectives and ''-ne-'' + a mandatory
possessive suffix In linguistics, a possessive affix (from la, affixum possessivum) is an affix (usually suffix or prefix) attached to a noun to indicate its possessor, much in the manner of possessive adjectives. Possessive affixes are found in many languages o ...
with the main noun. There is no singular-plural distinction; only the plural of the comitative exists and is used in both singular and plural senses, and thus it always appears as ''-ine-''. For instance, "with their big ships" is It is rarely used and is mainly a feature of formal literary language, appearing very rarely in everyday speech. The much more common, less formal way of expressing "with" is with the postposition ''kanssa'', e.g., ''suurten laivojensa kanssa'' "with their big ships". The two forms may contrast, however, since the comitative always comes with the possessive suffix and thus can only be used when the agent has some sort of possession of the thing expressed by the main noun. For instance, , "The foreign minister, with ssistance fromhis colleagues, is continuing the negotiations with the guerrillas", has ''kollegoineen'' "with his colleagues" contrasted with "with the guerrillas", the former "possessed", the latter not. Colloquial Finnish also has the postposition ''kaa'', derived from ''kanssa'' and cognate with the Estonian ''-ga''. With pronouns it is written as a suffix, ''-kaa''.


Sami languages

As there are many
Sami languages Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
there are variations between them. In the largest Sami language,
Northern Sami Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ...
, the comitative case means either communion, fellowship, connection - or instrument, tool. It can be used either as an
object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...
or as an
adverbial In English grammar, an adverbial (abbreviated ) is a word (an adverb) or a group of words (an adverbial clause or adverbial phrase) that modifies or more closely defines the sentence or the verb. (The word ''adverbial'' itself is also used as a ...
. It is expressed through the suffix ''-in'' in the singular and ''-iguin'' in the plural. An example of the object use in Northern Sami is "Dat láve álo riidalit isidi''in''", meaning "She always argues ''with'' her husband". An example of the adverbial use is "Mun čálán bleahka''in''", meaning "I write ''with'' ink".


Hungarian

In Hungarian, comitative case is marked by the suffix "-stul/-stül", as shown in the example below. However, the comitative case marker cannot be used if the companion has a plural marker. So when the comitative marker is added to a noun, it obscures whether that noun is singular or plural.


Chukchi

Chukchi uses a circumfix to express comitative case. In the example, the circumfix га-ма is attached to the root мэлгар "gun" to express comitative.


Drehu

In
Drehu Drehu (; also known as Dehu, Lifou, Lifu, qene drehu) is an Austronesian language mostly spoken on Lifou Island, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia. It has about twelve-thousand fluent speakers and the status of a French regional language. This st ...
, there are two prepositions which can be used to mark comitative. Which of the prepositions is used is determined by the classes of the accompanier and companion.


Hausa

The comitative marker in
Hausa Hausa may refer to: * Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa * Hausa language, spoken in West Africa * Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states * Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse See also * ...
is the preposition "dà". In Hausa, a prepositional phrase marked for comitative can be moved to the front of the sentence for emphasis, as shown in the examples below. In Hausa it is ungrammatical to do the same with coordinating conjunctions. For example, if the companions were "dog and cat", it would be ungrammatical to move either "dog" or "cat" to the front of the sentence for emphasis, while it is grammatical to do so when there is a comitative marker rather than a conjunction.


Further reading

* *


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Comitative Case Grammatical cases