In
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes doma ...
, the instrumental case (
abbreviated or ) is a
grammatical case
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...
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 abstract concept.
General discussion
The instrumental case appears in this
Russian sentence:
Here, the
inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...
of the noun indicates its instrumental rolethe
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...
''перо'' changes its ending to become ''пером''.
Modern English expresses the instrumental meaning by use of adverbial phrases that begin with the words ''with'', ''by'', or ''using'' then followed by the noun indicating the ''instrument'':
:''I wrote the note with a pen.''
:''I wrote the note (by) using a pen.''
Technical descriptions often use the phrase "by means of", which is similar to "by use of", as in:
:''I wrote the note by means of a pen.''
:''I wrote the note by use of a pen.''
This can be replaced by "via", which is a Latin
ablative of the nominative (viā) ''via'', meaning road, route, or way. In the ablative this means ''by way of''.
The instrumental case appears in
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
,
Old Saxon
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). I ...
,
Georgian,
Armenian,
Basque,
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
, and the
Balto-Slavic languages. An instrumental/
comitative case is arguably present in
Turkish as well as in
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, na ...
. Also, Uralic languages reuse the
adessive case where available,
locative case
In grammar, the locative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
if not, to mark the same category, or
comitative case (
Estonian
Estonian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe
* Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent
* Estonian language
* Estonian cuisine
* Estonian culture
See also
*
...
). For example, the
Finnish ''kirjoitan kynällä'' does not mean "I write on a pen", but "I write using a pen", even if the adessive ''-llä'' is used. In Ob-Ugric languages, the same category may also mark agents with verbs that use an
ergative alignment, for instance, "I give you, using a pen".
The instrumental case is notably used in Russian, where the case is called ''творительный падеж (tvoritel'nyj padež)'' though similar usages also can be found in other
Balto-Slavic languages. In most declension paradigms, the instrumental case in Russian can generally be distinguished by the -ом ("-om") suffix for most masculine and neuter nouns, the -ою/-oй ("-oju"/"-oj") suffix for most feminine nouns and -ами ("-ami") for any of the three genders in the plural.
Just as in English the preposition "with" can express instrumental ("using, by means of"), comitative ("in the company of"), and a number of other semantic relations, the instrumental case in Russian is not limited to its instrumental thematic role. It is also used to denote:
* the agent in a passive voice construction. E.g.: "Книга написана Марком Твеном" ("The book was written by Mark Twain"). Here, "Марком Твеном" ("by Mark Twain") is "Марк Твен" ("Mark Twain") in the instrumental case.
* a predicate with infinitive, future tense, imperative, conditional and gerund of the verbs "быть" and "являться" (both meaning 'to be') (for example, "я хочу быть врачом", "не будь трусом" translate as "I want to be a doctor" and "don't be a coward", with the nouns in the instrumental case).
* a predicate with a number of other verbs, denoting state, appearance, manner, consideration, etc.
* parts of the day, seasons of the year, and some other temporal relations. For example, the sentence "я работаю утром" (ja rabotaju utrom) means "I work in the morning". The word утро (utro, "morning") in its instrumental case denotes the time in which the action (in the case of this example, "working") takes place ("in the morning").
* similarity. For example, the phrases "выть волком," "умереть героем," "лететь стрелой" (to howl like a wolf, to die like a hero, to fly like an arrow) use nouns in the instrumental case.
* location, when used with prepositions "behind", "in front of", "under", "above", "next to", and "between"
The Russian instrumental case is also used with verbs of use and control (to own, to manage, to abuse, to rule, to possess, etc.), attitude (to be proud of, to threaten (with), to value, to be interested (in), to admire, to be obsessed (with), etc.), reciprocal action (to share, to exchange), and some other verbs.
Though the instrumental case does not exist in many languages, some languages use other cases to denote the means, or instrument, of an action. In
Classical Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
, for example, the
dative case
In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob ...
is used as the instrumental case. This can be seen in the sentence "," or "..me ktenei dolôi" (Book IX, line 407 of the
Odyssey
The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the '' Iliad'', ...
), which means "he kills me with a bait". Here, "," the dative of "δόλος" ("dolos" – a bait) is used as the instrumental case (the means or instrument here is, obviously, the bait). In Latin the instrumental case has merged with the
ablative, thus the ablative case has the same functions. For example, ''ipso facto'' can be translated as "by the fact itself", while ''oculīs vidēre'' means "to see with one's eyes".
In Modern
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 ...
, the word ''why'' is one instance of an etymologically instrumental
declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ...
. Though not commonly known to be of
pronominal origin, it was, in fact, inherited from
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
''hwȳ'', which was the declension of ''hwæt'' (now ''what'') in the Old English instrumental casea grammatical feature rare even in Old English. The modern instrumental case (as present in ''why'') does not bear the meaning of instrument, but of purpose, cause, or reason: rather, the closely related form ''how'' is used to express instrument, way, or means.
Indo-European languages
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...
has been reconstructed as having eight cases, one of which was the instrumental.
[R. D. Fulk, ''A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages'', Studies in Germanic Linguistics, 3 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2018), .]
Sanskrit
The instrumental case in
Classical Sanskrit can have several meanings:
* It can indicate the instrument (of an action):
* It can be used to indicate someone or something accompanying an action. In this case, the sense of "company" is indicated by postpositions like सह ''saha'' ("with") (may be optionally omitted):
* It can indicate the agent of a passive verb:
* It can indicate the cause, reason or circumstance of an action. In this case, it can be translated as "because of", "out of", etc.:
* It is used with the preposition विना ''vinā'' ("without"):
* It can also be used with the particles अलम् ''alam'' कृतम् ''kṛtam'', both meaning "enough".
Assamese
In
Standard Assamese (এ)ৰে ''(e)re'' indicates the instrumental case. (এ)দি ''(e)di'' does the job in some dialects.
Ancient Greek
The functions of the
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...
instrumental case were taken over by the
dative
In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob ...
, so that the Greek dative has functions belonging to the Proto-Indo-European dative, instrumental, and
locative. This is the case with the bare dative, and the dative with the preposition
σύν ''sýn'' "with". It is possible, however, that Mycenean Greek had the instrumental case, which was later replaced by dative in all the
Greek dialects.
[ Andrew Garett, "Convergence in the formation of Indo-European subgroups: Phylogeny and chronology", in Phylogenetic methods and the prehistory of languages, ed. Peter Forster and Colin Renfrew (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research), 2006, p. 140, citing Ivo Hajnal, Studien zum mykenischen Kasussystem. Berlin, 1995, with the proviso that "the Mycenaean case system is still controversial in part".]
Germanic
Common Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bra ...
inherited the Indo-European instrumental case, but in nouns, the case was almost entirely lost in
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
,
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...
,
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...
and
Old Frisian
Old Frisian was a West Germanic language spoken between the 8th and 16th centuries along the North Sea coast, roughly between the mouths of the Rhine and Weser rivers. The Frisian settlers on the coast of South Jutland (today's Northern Fries ...
, which indicated the instrumental case with the dative inflection in all but a few relic forms.
Early
Old High German
Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050.
There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old Hig ...
and
Old Saxon
Old Saxon, also known as Old Low German, was a Germanic language and the earliest recorded form of Low German (spoken nowadays in Northern Germany, the northeastern Netherlands, southern Denmark, the Americas and parts of Eastern Europe). I ...
nouns do exhibit an instrumental case, for example Old High German ''wortu'' 'word' and Old Saxon ''hoƀu'' 'court', where the -''u'' ending derives from a Proto-Indo-European instrumental inflection *-''ō''.
In adjectives, no instrumental plural inflection can be reconstructed for Common Germanic, but the early
West Germanic dialects did retain a distinctive instrumental singular strong adjective ending.
Similarly, in demonstrative and interrogative pronouns, there is no evidence for distinctive instrumental plural inflections, but the West Germanic dialects and, less often, Old Norse and Gothic, retained distinctive instrumental singular forms.
In nouns, the Old German instrumental was replaced with the dative in
Middle High German
Middle High German (MHG; german: Mittelhochdeutsch (Mhd.)) is the term for the form of German spoken in the High Middle Ages. It is conventionally dated between 1050 and 1350, developing from Old High German and into Early New High German. Hig ...
, comparable with English and Ancient Greek, with a construction of ''mit'' (with) + dative clause (in English, the objective case is used). For example:
"Hans schrieb mit einem Stifte*."
(John
ominativewrote with a
ativepencil
ative)
''
*the German dative -e is not used in most common conversation; it is only used here for a better demonstration.''
*ein = a, nominative case masculine/neuter → einem = a, dative case masculine/neuter
*(der) Stift = (the) pencil, masculine, nominative
*(dem) Stifte = (the) pencil, masculine, dative
Czech
Just as above, the object with which the action is done or completed is declined. For example:
* ''Píšu perem''.
** psát = to write; píšu = I write
** pero = a pen → per''em'' = ''with'' a pen
* ''Jedu do školy autobusem''.
** jet = to go via transport (× jít = to go on foot); jedu = I go (using any kind of vehicle)
** škola = school, do školy = to school (
dative
In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob ...
)
** autobus = a bus → autobus''em'' = ''by'' bus
Armenian
The instrumental in
Armenian is denoted by the -ով (-ov) suffix to say that an action is done by, with or through an agent.
* մատիտ (''matit'', pencil) → մատիտ''ով'' (''matitov'', with/by a pencil)
** մատիտով գրիր (''matitov grir'') Write with a pencil.
While the instrumental case is the form most commonly used for this purpose, when coupled with the
passive voice
A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or '' patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing ...
in Armenian the instrumental case can be replaced with the
ablative case.
Serbo-Croatian
Instrumental in the
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia an ...
language group is usually used to denote a noun with which the action is done, e.g. "Idem ''autom''" - "I'm going by means of a car", "Jedem ''vilicom/viljuškom''" - "I eat with a fork", "Prenosi se ''zrakom/vazduhom''" - "It's transferred through air", "Prožeta je ''bijesom''" - "She's consumed by anger". The instrumental preposition "s(a)", meaning "with", is supposed to be dropped in this usage, but it is often kept in casual speech when talking about objects in use, such as a pen, a hammer, etc.
Instrumental can also denote company, in which case "s(a)" is mandatory, e.g. "Pričali smo ''sa svima''" - "We talked with everyone", "Došao je ''s roditeljima''" - "He came with his parents", "Šetala se ''sa psom''" - "She was taking a walk with her dog". Dropping "s(a)" in this case would either make the sentences incorrect, or change their meaning entirely because dative, locative and instrumental share the same form in the plural, so the examples "Pričali smo ''svima''" i "Došao je ''roditeljima''" would come to mean "We told everyone" and "He came to his parents".
Instrumental is also used with certain spatial prepositions like "među" (between), "nad" (above), "pod" (underneath), "pred" (in front of) and "za" (after). Note the difference between these prepositions and similar ones used for genitive with an -i suffix: "između", "iznad", "ispod", "ispred" and "iza".
Instrumental is used without proposition to denote travelling through an area: "Putujem ''zemljom''" - "I'm travelling the country", "Hodam ''plažom''" - "I'm walking along a beach", etc.
It can also be used to show how long or when in a larger scope of time something happened: "Nema ih ''godinama''" - "They haven't come in years", "''S vremenom'' će proći" - "It will pass in time", "Jednom ''tjednom''" - "Once a week", etc.
Baltic - Latvian
The instrumental case in
Latvian declension
In the Latvian language, nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals are inflected in six declensions. There are seven cases:
* nominative (nominatīvs)
* genitive (ģenitīvs)
* dative (datīvs)
* accusative (akuzatīvs)
* instrumental (instrumen ...
(One of the three
Baltic languages
The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 4.5 million people mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. Together with the Slavic lan ...
that also include
Lithuanian, and
Old Prussian and can have several meanings:
* It can indicate the instrument (of an action):
:
:"He writes ''with a pen''".
* It can be used to indicate someone or something accompanying an action. In this case, :
:
:"She sang with a girl".
Uralic
Hungarian
The instrumental case is present in the
Hungarian language
Hungarian () is an Uralic language spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighbouring countries. It is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary, it is also spoken by Hungar ...
, where it serves several purposes. The main purpose is the same as the above, i.e. the means with which an action occurs. It has a role in the ''-(t)at-''
causative
In linguistics, a causative ( abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...
form of verbs, that is, the form of a verb that shows the subject caused someone else to action the verb. In this sense, the instrumental case is used to mark the person that was caused to execute the action expressed by the verb. It is also used to quantify or qualify words such as 'better' or 'ago', such as ''sokkal jobban'' 'much better' (literally 'with-much better'); ''hét évvel ezelőtt'' 'seven years ago' (literally 'seven with-years before this').
In Hungarian the instrumental and
comitative case look the same, see
Instrumental-comitative case.
See the links section below for a more detailed article.
Finnish
Finnish has a historic, marginal
instructive case (''-n''), but in practice the
adessive case (''-lla/-llä'') is used instead outside lexicalised fixed expressions, even though the adessive literally means 'on top', e.g. ''vasaralla'' 'using a hammer' (instrumental meaning) or 'on a hammer' (locative meaning). (''Vasaroin'' 'using hammers' is plausible and understandable, but not common in use.)
Uto-Aztecan
Nahuatl
Nahuatl
Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have small ...
uses the suffix ''-tica'' to indicate the instrumental case.
For example, in the sentence ''ātlān ācaltica in huāllahqueh'' 'they came on the water by boat', ''ācalli'' means 'boat' and ''ācaltica'' means 'by (use of a) boat'.
Turkic
Turkish
Turkish uses the conjunction ''ile'' ("with"), and its suffixed form ''-(y)lA'' (realised as ''-(y)la'' or ''-(y)le'', depending on the dominant vowel of the noun—see
vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, me ...
) to indicate the instrumental case. For example, in the sentence ''Arabayla geldi'' 'he came by (the use of a) car', ''araba'' means 'car' and ''arabayla'' means 'by (the use of a) car, with a car'.
The original
Proto-Turkic instrumental case suffix was ''-n'', which is less
productive
Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...
today but is preserved in common words like ''yazın'' ("during the summer"), ''kışın'' ("during the winter"), ''öğlen'' ("at noon"), and ''yayan'' ("by foot", "on foot"). It became less productive in most
Oghuz Turkic languages. The conjunction ''ile'' ("with") in Turkish has semantically expanded to fill the gap (''kürek ile'' or ''kürekle'', meaning "with the shovel" > "using the shovel"), being used as an instrumental marker, and the suffix ''-(y)lA'' (''-le'', ''-la'', ''-yle'', ''-yla'') is a form of ''ile'' which has been grammaticalized into an agglutinative suffix as a result of quick speech, becoming an
enclitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...
.
Japanese
In
Japanese, the post-positional
particle
In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass.
They vary greatly in size or quantity, from ...
で ''de'' indicates the instrumental case.
Northeast Caucasian
Vainakhish
The instrumental in the North Caucasian language
Vainakhish is denoted by the -ца / -аца / -ица (-tsa / -atsa / -itsa) suffix to describes an action which is done with an agent:
The
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...
''Baham'' changes its ending to become ''Bahamitsa'':
*Бахьам = pen → Бахьам''ица'' = ''with'' a pen
**Бахьамица йазздир (''bahamitsa yazzdir'') Wrote with a pen.
References
External links
DefinitionHungarian
{{DEFAULTSORT:Instrumental Case
Grammatical cases