grammarinstrumental

Grammarinstrumental is a term sometimes used in linguistics and language pedagogy to refer to the grammatical marking of instrumentality—the means by which an action is performed. The concept encompasses how languages encode the instrument or means of an action, including the use of instrumental cases, prepositions, or other constructions.

Across languages, instrumentality can be expressed in various forms. In languages with a dedicated instrumental case, the noun changes form to mark the instrument; in others, instrumental meaning is expressed by prepositional phrases such as "with" in English, or by periphrastic constructions. Some languages use clitics or affixes to mark instrument. The distinction between instrument and related notions such as comitative (with) can be a matter of typology and semantics.

The study of grammarinstrumental covers typology, syntax, morphology, and semantics. It intersects with research on semantic roles, voice, and argument structure. In language description, researchers document how different grammars encode instrument, noting typical cross-linguistic patterns and exceptions.

In education and natural language processing, grammarinstrumental informed resources support teaching instrumentality in grammar, and assist algorithms in identifying instrument arguments for tasks like event extraction and machine translation. However, the label grammarinstrumental is not universally standard; it often appears as a label in niche studies, pedagogical materials, or computational datasets rather than as a formal typology in major grammars.