comitatiivne

Comitatiivne, or comitative, is a grammatical category used in linguistics to mark accompaniment in an action. It expresses that another participant accompanies or participates with the subject or agent of the verb, effectively meaning “with …” or “in the company of ….” The comitative is one of several means languages use to encode relationships between participants, and it is distinct from instrumental (which marks means or manner) and from purely associative or social markings in some systems.

Morphology and realization vary across languages. In many languages the comitative is realized by a dedicated case, a postposition, or a clitic attached to the noun phrase. In others, accompaniment is expressed by periphrastic phrases, such as a prepositional or adpositional element meaning “with.” Some languages merge comitative meaning with genitive, instrumental, or other cases, while others have no separate comitative form and rely on adverbial expressions or context to convey accompaniment.

Cross-linguistic distribution shows that comitative marking is typologically diverse. While common in numerous language families, it is not universal, and the same function may be encoded by different grammatical means within and across languages. The comitative may sometimes interact with social or distributive meanings, indicating not only physical accompaniment but also social association or co-participation in an activity.

In summary, comitatiivne describes how languages encode the relationship of accompaniment between participants in an event, using cases, postpositions, or periphrastic constructions to mark the entity that accompanies the action.