instrumentaalsecomitatiivse

Instrumentaalse comitatiivse is a term used in linguistic descriptions to denote a grammatical form or construction that encodes both instrumental and comitative meaning. Broadly, instrumental meaning concerns the means or instrument by which an action is performed, while comitative meaning concerns accompaniment or association, i.e., with whom or with what the action is carried out. In languages that have a dedicated instrumentally comitative marking, a single form on a noun (or a nearby clitic/postposition) can bundledly express both aspects or signal one aspect with a strong contextual tendency toward the other.

Realization of this category varies across languages. Some languages employ a fused case marker or affix that simultaneously marks instrument and company. Others use a postpositional phrase or a periphrastic construction that combines an instrumental marker with a comitative element. The morphological realization may show agreement in number or gender, and can interact with other case systems or syntactic positions. The availability of an instrumentaalse comitatiivse form often correlates with the broader typology of instrumental and comitative marking in the language.

Typologically, the category is relatively rare and tends to appear in languages with rich case systems or in analytic/postpositional traditions. Its presence can affect word order and disambiguation strategies, since the same form may convey multiple semantic layers. When translating or comparing languages without this category, instrumental and comitative meanings are typically expressed by separate forms or by periphrastic constructions.

See also: Instrumental case, Comitative case, Postpositional constructions, Grammatical case.