Online Encyclopedia
Comitative case
Grammatical cases |
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List of grammatical cases |
Abessive case |
Ablative case |
Absolutive case |
Adessive case |
Allative case |
Causal case |
Causal-final case |
Comitative case |
Dative case |
Dedative case |
Delative case |
Disjunctive case |
Distributive case |
Distributive-temporal case |
Elative case |
Essive case |
Essive-formal case |
Essive-modal case |
Excessive case |
Final case |
Formal case |
Genitive case |
Illative case |
Inessive case |
Instructive case |
Instrumental case |
Lative case |
Locative case |
Modal case |
Multiplicative case |
Oblique case |
Objective case |
Partitive case |
Possessive case |
Postpositional case |
Prepositional case |
Prolative case |
Prosecutive case |
Separative case |
Sociative case |
Sublative case |
Superessive case |
Temporal case |
Terminative case |
Translative case |
Vialis case |
Vocative case |
Morphosyntactic alignment |
Absolutive case |
Accusative case |
Ergative case |
Instrumental case |
Instrumental-comitative case |
Intransitive case |
Nominative case |
Declension |
Declension in English |
The Comitative case is used where English would use "in company with" or "together with". It, and many other cases, are found in the Finnish language, the Hungarian language, and the Estonian language.
In the Estonian language comitative is formed by adding the suffix '-ga' to the genitive in case of singular:
- nina (nominative: nose) -> nina (genitive) -> ninaga (comitative: with a nose)
- koer (nominative: dog) -> koera (genitive) -> koeraga (comitative: with a dog)
And by adding the suffixes '-de' and '-ga' to the partitive in case of plural:
- leht (nominative: leaf, page) -> lehte (partitive) -> lehtedega (comitative: with leaves)
- kass (nominative: cat) -> kassi (partitive) -> kassidega (comitative: with cats)
In the Estonian language 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).
In the Finnish language, the comitative is rare and not used in spoken Finnish. The suffix is -neen for the noun and -ne for adjectives, 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 "from". It has only a plural, which is, paradoxically, used to denote the 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 Finnish, this abbreviates to a clitic very similar to the Estonian comitative, -nkaa (via -nkans). It is debatable if this is a grammatical case, because it does not obey vowel harmony; that is, there is no form -nkää. Some dialects do have such a form, however.