Instrumental case
The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. The noun may be either a physical object or an abstract concept.
General discussion
The instrumental case appears in this Russian sentence:Here, the inflection of the noun indicates its instrumental rolethe nominative перо changes its ending to become пером.
Modern English expresses the instrumental meaning by use of adverbial phrases that begin with the words with, by, or using then followed by the noun indicating the instrument:
Technical descriptions often use the phrase "by means of", which is similar to "by use of", as in:
This can be replaced by "via", which is a Latin ablative of the nominative via, meaning road, route, or way. In the ablative this means by way of.
The instrumental case appears in Old English, Old Saxon, Georgian, Armenian, Basque, Sanskrit, and the Balto-Slavic languages. An instrumental/comitative case is arguably present in Turkish as well as in Tamil. Also, Uralic languages reuse the adessive case where available, locative case if not, to mark the same category, or comitative case. For example, the Finnish kirjoitan kynällä does not mean "I write on a pen", but "I write using a pen", even if the adessive -llä is used. In Ob-Ugric languages, the same category may also mark agents with verbs that use an ergative alignment, like "I give you, using a pen".
The instrumental case is notably used in Russian, where the case is called творительный падеж though similar usages also can be found in other Balto-Slavic languages. In most declension paradigms, the instrumental case in Russian can generally be distinguished by the -ом suffix for most masculine and neuter nouns, the -ою/-oй suffix for most feminine nouns and -ами for any of the three genders in the plural.
Just as in English the preposition "with" can express instrumental, comitative, and a number of other semantic relations, the instrumental case in Russian is not limited to its instrumental thematic role. It is also used to denote:
- the agent in a passive voice construction. E.g.: "Книга написана Марком Твеном". Here, "Марком Твеном" is "Марк Твен" in the instrumental case.
- a predicate with infinitive, future tense, imperative, conditional and gerund of the verbs "быть" and "являться" .
- a predicate with a number of other verbs, denoting state, appearance, manner, consideration, etc.
- parts of the day, seasons of the year, and some other temporal relations. For example, the sentence "я работаю утром" means "I work in the morning". The word утро in its instrumental case denotes the time in which the action takes place.
- similarity. For example, the phrases "выть волком," "умереть героем," "лететь стрелой" use nouns in the instrumental case.
- location, when used with prepositions "behind", "in front of", "under", "above", "next to", and "between"
Though the instrumental case does not exist in many languages, some languages use other cases to denote the means, or instrument, of an action. In Classical Greek, for example, the dative case is used as the instrumental case. This can be seen in the sentence "..με κτείνει δόλῳ," or "..me ktenei dolôi", which means "he kills me with a bait". Here, "δόλῳ," the dative of "δόλος" is used as the instrumental case. In Latin the instrumental case has merged with the ablative, thus the ablative case has the same functions. For example, ipso facto can be translated as "by the fact itself", while oculīs vidēre means "to see with one's eyes".
In Modern English, the word why is one instance of an etymologically instrumental declension. Though not commonly known to be of pronominal origin, it was, in fact, inherited from Old English hwȳ, which was the declension of hwæt in the Old English instrumental casea grammatical feature rare even in Old English. The modern instrumental case does not bear the meaning of instrument, but of purpose, cause, or reason: rather, the closely related form how is used to express instrument, way, or means.
Indo-European languages
Sanskrit
The instrumental case in Classical Sanskrit can have several meanings:- It can indicate the instrument :
- It can be used to indicate someone or something accompanying an action. In this case, the sense of "company" is indicated by postpositions like सह saha :
- It can indicate the agent of a passive verb:
- It can indicate the cause, reason or circumstance of an action. In this case, it can be translated as "because of", "out of", etc.:
- It is used with the preposition विना vinā :
- It can also be used with the particles अलम् alam कृतम् kṛtam, both meaning "enough".
Assamese
Ancient Greek
The functions of the Proto-Indo-European instrumental case were taken over by the dative, so that the Greek dative has functions belonging to the Proto-Indo-European dative, instrumental, and locative. This is the case with the bare dative, and the dative with the preposition sýn "with". It is possible, however, that Mycenean Greek had the instrumental case, which was later replaced by dative in all the Greek dialects.German
While Old High German possessed a rudimentary instrumental case, its function was replaced with the dative in Middle High German, comparable with English and Ancient Greek, with a construction of "mit" + dative clause. For example:"Hans schrieb mit einem Stifte*."
- ein = a, nominative case masculine/neuter → einem = a, dative case masculine/neuter
- Stift = pencil, masculine, nominative
- Stifte = pencil, masculine, dative
Czech
- Píšu perem.
- * psát = to write; píšu = I write
- * pero = a pen → perem = with a pen
- Jedu do školy autobusem.
- * jet = to go via transport ; jedu = I go
- * škola = school, do školy = to school
- * autobus = a bus → autobusem = by bus
Armenian
- մատիտ → մատիտով
- * մատիտով գրիր Write with a pencil.
Serbo-Croatian
Instrumental is usually used to denote a noun with which the action is done, i.e. "Idem autom"-"I'm going by means of a car", "Jedem vilicom"-"I eat with a fork", "Prenosi se zrakom"-"it's transferred through air", "Prožeta je bijesom" – "She's consumed by anger". The instrumental preposition s, meaning "with", is supposed to be dropped in this usage, but it's often kept in casual speech when talking about objects in usage such as a pen, a hammer, a car etc.Instrumental can also denote company, in which case s is obligatory, i.e. "Pričali smo sa svima"-"We talked with everyone", "Došao je s roditeljima"-"He came with his parents", "Šetala se sa psom"-"She was taking a walk with her dog".
Dropping s in this case would either make the sentences incorrect, or change their meaning entirely because dative, locative and instrumental share the same form in the plural, so the examples "Pričali smo svima" i "Došao je roditeljima" would come to mean "We've been talking at everyone" and "He came to his parents".
Instrumental is also used with certain spatial prepositions like među, nad, pod, pred, za. Note the difference between these prepositions and similar ones used for genitive with an -i suffix: između, iznad, ispod, ispred, iza. It is also used without proposition: "Putujem zemljom", "Hodam plažom". It is also used to show how long or when in a larger scope of time something happens: "Nema ih godinama", "S vremenom će proći", "Jednom tjednom"
Uralic
Hungarian
The instrumental case is present in the Hungarian language, where it serves several purposes. The main purpose is the same as the above, i.e. the means with which an action occurs. It has a role in the -at- causative form of verbs, that is, the form of a verb that shows the subject caused someone else to action the verb. In this sense, the instrumental case is used to mark the person that was caused to execute the action expressed by the verb. It is also used to quantify or qualify words such as 'better' or 'ago', such as sokkal jobban 'much better' ; hét évvel ezelőtt 'seven years ago'.In Hungarian the instrumental and comitative case look the same, see Instrumental-comitative case.
See the links section below for a more detailed article.
Finnish
has a historic, marginal instructive case, but in practice the adessive case is used instead outside lexicalised fixed expressions, even though the adessive literally means 'on top', e.g. vasaralla 'using a hammer' or 'on a hammer'.Uto-Aztecan
Nahuatl
uses the suffix -tica to indicate the instrumental case.For example, in the sentence ātlān ācaltica in huāllahqueh 'they came on the water by boat', ācalli means 'boat' and ācaltica means 'by boat'.
Turkic
Turkish
uses the conjunction ile, and its suffixed form -lA la or - to indicate the instrumental case. For example, in the sentence Arabayla geldi 'he came by car', araba means 'car' and arabayla means 'by car, with a car'.The original Proto-Turkic instrumental case suffix was -n, which is less productive today but is preserved in common words like yazın, kışın, öğlen, and yayan. It became less productive in most Oghuz Turkic languages. The conjunction ile in Turkish has semantically expanded to fill the gap, being used as an instrumental marker, and the suffix -lA is a form of ile which has been grammaticalized into an agglutinative suffix as a result of quick speech, becoming an enclitic.
Japanese
In Japanese, the post-positional particle で de indicates the instrumental case.Northeast Caucasian
Vainakhish
The instrumental in the North Caucasian language Vainakhish is denoted by the -ца / -аца / -ица suffix to describes an action which is done with an agent:The nominative Baham changes its ending to become Bahamitsa:
- Бахьам = pen → Бахьамица = with a pen
- *Бахьамица йазздир Wrote with a pen.