Comitative case

The comitative case (abbreviated COM) is a grammatical case that denotes accompaniment. In English, the preposition "with", in the sense of "in company with" or "together with", plays a substantially similar role (other uses of "with", e.g. with the meaning of "using" or "by means of" (I cut bread with a knife), correspond to the instrumental case or related cases).

Core meaning

Comitative case encodes a relationship of "accompaniment" between two participants in an event, called the "accompanee" and the "companion." In addition, there is a "relator" (which can be of multiple lexical categories, but is most commonly an affix or adposition). Use of Comitative case gives prominence to the accompanee. For example:

In this case, il professore is the accompanee, i suoi studenti is the companion, and con is the relator. As the accompanee, il professore is the most prominent.

Animacy also plays a major role in most languages that have a Comitative case. One group of languages requires both the accompanee and the companion to be either human or animate. Another group requires both to be in the same category—that is, both human or both animate. A third group requires an animate accompanee and an inanimate companion. The remaining languages have no restrictions based on animacy.