The comitative case (abbreviated COM) is a grammatical case that denotes accompaniment. In English, 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 or related cases).
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Core meaning
Comitative case encodes a relationship of "accompaniment" between two participants in an event, called the "accompanee" 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 Comitative case gives prominence to the accompanee. This Italian sentence is an example:
[il professore]accompanee entra nell'aula [con]relator [i suoi studenti]companion 'the professor enters the lecture-hall (together) with his students'.In this case, il professore is the accompanee, i suoi studenti is the companion, and con is the relator. As the accompanee, il professore is the most prominent.
Animacy also plays a major role in most languages with a comitative case. One group of languages requires both the accompanee 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 accompanee 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 and the associative case.
The comitative relates to an accompanee and a companion, and the instrumental relates to an agent, an object, and a patient. 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, it is often difficult to separate them.
Russian is one of many languages that differentiates morphologically between instrumental and comitative:
'I'll go to the movies with my mom.' 'I cut the bread with this knife.'In Russian, the comitative is marked by adding a preposition s and by declining the companion in the instrumental case. 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 accompanee-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, by prefixes, suffixes 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, which uses prefixes; and Chuckchi, which uses circumfixes.
Comitative relations are also commonly expressed by using adpositions: 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.
French
French uses prepositions to express the Comitative semantic relation.
'with his/her mother'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, a variety of comitative for bodily property or clothes. The French ornative marker is “à”.
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.
'And Nelda and Rudolf looked very knowingly at Ernestine.'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.
'Because it was no fun to live under someone else's roof, especially with all the horses and the cart'.Estonian
In Estonian, the Comitative (kaasaütlev) marker is the suffix “-ga”.
'And Barber takes a sip together with Balthasar.'Finnish
In Finnish, the comitative case (komitatiivi) has the suffix -ne with adjectives and -ne- + a mandatory possessive suffix with the main noun. There is no singular-plural distinction; only the plural of the comitative is used in both singular and plural senses, thus it appears always as -ine-. For instance, "with their big ships" is suuri·ne laivo·i·ne·en (big-COM ship(oblique)-PL-COM-POS 3PL), while "with his/her big ships" is suuri·ne laivo·i·ne·nsa ((big-COM ship(oblique)-PL-COM-POS 3SG)). It is rarely used and is mainly a feature of the formal literary language, appearing very rarely in everyday speech.
The regular "with" is expressed with the postposition kanssa, thus this form is used in most cases, e.g. suurien laivojensa kanssa "with their big ships". The two forms may contrast, however, since the comitative always comes with the possessive suffix, and thus can be only used when the agent has possession of some sort over the main noun. For instance, Ulkoministeri jatkaa kollegoineen neuvotteluja sissien kanssa, "The foreign minister, with [assistance from] his colleagues, continues the negotiations with the guerrillas", has kollegoineen "with his colleagues" contrasted with sissien kanssa "with the guerrillas", the former "possessed", the latter not.
Sami languages
As there are many Sami languages there are variations between them. In the largest Sami language, Northern Sami, the comitative case means either communion, fellowship, connection - or instrument, tool. It can be used either as an object or as an adverbial.
It is expressed through the suffix -in in Northern Sami, and is the same in both singular and plural.
An example of the object use in Northern Sami is "Dat láve álo riidalit isidiin", meaning "She always argues with her husband". An example of the adverbial use is "Mun čálán bleahkain", meaning "I write with ink".
Hungarian
In Hungarian, comitative case is marked by the suffix “-stul/-stül,” as shown in the example below.
'I was lying in bed with my clothes and shoes on.'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.
'They went on vacation with their child/children.'Chukchi
Chukchi uses a circumfix to express Comitative case.
'The boy ran out with a gun.'In the example, the circumfix га-ма is attached to the root мэлгар “gun” to express Comitative.
Drehu
In Drehu, there are two prepositions which can be used to mark Comitative. Which of the prepositions is used is determined by the classes of the accompanee and companion.
'He goes with me.' 'I met (with) the girl.'Hausa
The Comitative marker in Hausa 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.
'With his children indeed, he came here.' 'It is with Bala that I went to the market.'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.