comatiiv

The comatiiv, or comitative case, is a grammatical category used to mark accompaniment or association with another entity. It expresses “with whom” or “together with whom” an action is performed and can appear as a dedicated inflection, a postposition, or a clitic, depending on the language.

Across languages, the comitative is realized in several ways. In Estonian, it is a suffix attached to the noun, usually rendered as -ga (or -ga after certain consonants). Examples include koeraga “with a dog” and sõbraga “with a friend”; the pronoun form minuga means “with me.” In Finnish, the equivalent is expressed with the postpositional element kanssa after a possessive phrase, as in ystävieni kanssa “with my friends.” In Turkish, accompaniment is commonly expressed by the postposition ile, and it can also be built into compounds such as arkadaşımla “with my friend” using possessive suffixes combined with a with-phrase.

Not all languages have a dedicated comitative case. Some express the same meaning using the instrumental case, adessive or other postpositions, or periphrastic constructions. The comitative is thus a cross-linguistic device for encoding accompaniment, found in various language families with differing morphologies and syntactic alignments.

Etymology and typology: the term derives from Latin comitatus, “company, attendance.” In linguistic typology, comitative constructions are analyzed in relation to instrumental and adverbial expressions of collaboration or association.

See also: instrumental case, adessive case, postposition, grammatical case.