The
comitative case also known as the
associative case (
abbreviated ), is a
grammatical caseIn grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
that denotes companionship, and is used where English would use "in company with" or "together with" . Among other languages, it is found in
KoreanKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
,
FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
,
HungarianHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
,
MongolianThe Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
,
EstonianEstonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
,
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
and many
Australian Aboriginal languagesThe Australian Aboriginal languages comprise several language families and isolates native to the Australian Aborigines of Australia and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding the languages of Tasmania and the Torres Strait Islanders...
where it is very commonly used to form names of places and languages.
Estonian
In the
Estonian languageEstonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
singular comitative is formed by adding the suffix '-ga' to the genitive in case of singular:
- nina (nominative: nose) → nina (genitive: of nose) → ninaga (comitative: with a nose)
- koer (nominative: dog) → koera (genitive: of dog) → koeraga (comitative: with a dog)
And by adding the suffixes '-de' and '-ga' to the singular
partitiveIn linguistics, the partitive is a word, phrase, or case that divides something into parts. For example, in the English sentence I'll have some coffee, some is a partitive determiner because it makes the noun phrase some coffee refer to a subset of all coffee...
in case of plural, thus making first a plural genitive case and then adding the comitative suffix:
- leht (nominative: leaf, page) → lehte (partitive: leaf) → lehtede (genitive: of leaves) → lehtedega (comitative: with leaves)
- kass (nominative: cat) → kassi (partitive: cat) → kasside (genitive: of cats) → kassidega (comitative: with cats)
In the
Estonian languageEstonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
comitative is also used to denote when something is used as an implement -
kirvega (with axe / using an axe) or as a means of transport
laevaga (by boat).
Finnish
In the
Finnish languageFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, the comitative is rare and seldom used in
spoken FinnishColloquial Finnish is the "dialectless" colloquial standard of the Finnish language. It is spoken in the Greater Helsinki region, and in urbanized areas in the Tavastian and Central Finland dialectal areas, such as the cities of Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna...
. The suffix
-ne is used alone only when it is an attribute of another word, otherwise additional
possessive suffixIn linguistics, a possessive affix is a suffix or prefix attached to a noun to indicate its possessor, much in the manner of possessive adjectives. Possessive suffixes are found in some Uralic, Altaic, Semitic, and Indo-European languages...
must be added, such as
-ne+en, e.g.
suurine vuorineen "with its large mountains". The Finnish literary comitative expresses only possessions or attributes, and as such does not replace the preposition "with". It has only a plural, which is, paradoxically, used to denote both the singular and the plural, e.g.
tyttö koirineen "girl with her dog(s)".
In the expressions corresponding to the Estonian ones above, the adessive may be used, e.g.
lehdillä "with leaves" or
laivalla "by boat". The idea of "being in company" is expressed with genitive +
kanssa, e.g.
tyttö koiran kanssa "girl with dog". In
spoken FinnishColloquial Finnish is the "dialectless" colloquial standard of the Finnish language. It is spoken in the Greater Helsinki region, and in urbanized areas in the Tavastian and Central Finland dialectal areas, such as the cities of Jyväskylä, Lahti, Hyvinkää, and Hämeenlinna...
, this abbreviates to a
cliticIn morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
very similar to the Estonian comitative,
-nkaa (via
-nkans). It is debatable if this is a grammatical case, because it does not obey
vowel harmonyVowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....
; that is, there is no form
-nkää. Some dialects do have such a form, however.
Japanese
In the
Japanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, the comitative uses the same particle as the coordinating conjunction
to (and).
Yūbe tomodachi-to eiga-o mi-ni itta. ((I) went to the movies
with friends last night.) (Lit: last.night friend(s)-
with movie(s)-acc see-to went) Compare:
tomodachi-to kazoku-wa hitsuyō da. (Friends
and family are important.) (Lit: friends and family-TOP necessity COPULA.)
English
English also exhibits grammatical behavior which may be described as instances of the comitative case. The most prominent example is with the first person singular pronoun, although higher registers tend to avoid this usage via editing:
- My dad and me haven't ever really been close.
- Me and my wife's favorite fish is mackerel.