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Information about Instrumental Case

Grammatical cases
General
Declension - Grammatical case - List of grammatical cases - Morphosyntactic alignment - Oblique / objective case
Grammatical cases
Abessive - Ablative - Absolutive - Accusative - Addirective - Adelative - Adessive - Adverbial - Allative - Antessive - Apudessive - Aversive - Benefactive - Caritive - Causal - Causal-final - Comitative - Dative - Delative - Direct - Distributive - Distributive-temporal - Elative - Ergative - Essive - Essive-formal - Essive-modal - Equative - Evitative - Exessive - Final - Formal - Genitive - Illative - Inelative - Inessive - Instructive - Instrumental - Instrumental-comitative - Intransitive - Lative - Locative - Modal - Multiplicative - Nominative - Partitive - Pegative - Perlative - Possessive - Postelative - Postdirective - Postessive - Postpositional - Prepositional - Privative - Prolative - Prosecutive - Proximative - Separative - Sociative - Subdirective - Subessive - Subelative - Sublative - Superdirective - Superessive - Superlative - Suppressive - Temporal - Terminative - Translative - Vialis - Vocative
Declensions
Czech declension - English declension - German declension - Irish declension - Latin declension - Latvian declension - Lithuanian declension - Slovak declension
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The instrumental case (also called the eighth 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.

For example, in this Russian sentence:

Я написал письмо ручкой. (ya napisal pis'mo ruchkoi)


the inflection of the noun indicates its instrumental role -- the nominative ручка changes its ending to become ручкой. English, lacking an instrumental case, might use a preposition (usually with) to express the same meaning:

I wrote the note with/by means of a pen.


However, such a sentence structure is often altogether avoided in English by transforming the noun into a past-tense verb, e.g. "I penned the book." Technical descriptions often use the phrase "by means of", which has often conventionally been replaced by "via", which is a Latin instrumental ablative of the nominative (with the same form) via, meaning road, route, or way. In the ablative this means by way of.

The instrumental case appears in Old English, Georgian, Basque, Sanskrit, and the Balto-Slavic languages. An instrumental/comitative case is arguably present in Turkish and other Altaic languages, as well as in Tamil. Also, Uralic languages reuse the adessive case where available, or locative case if not, to mark the same category. 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 most notably used in Russian, where the case is called творительный падеж (tvoritelnij padezh). Though exceptions exist, the instrumental case in Russian can generally be distinguished by the -ом ("-om") suffix for most masculine and neuter nouns, the -oй ("-oy") suffix for most feminine nouns and -ами for either gender in the plural.

However, in Russian, as with many Slavic languages, the instrumental case is not only used to denote the mean of a certain action, but also:
  • to denote a time where an action occurs ("during"). For example, in the sentence "я работаю утром" (ya rabotayu utrom), which means "I work during the day," the word утро (utro, "day, morning") in its instrumental case denotes the time in which the action (in the case of this example, "working") takes place ("during the day").
  • to denote a change of status. For example, in the sentence "сегодня я стал американским гражданином" (sevodnya ya stal amerikanskim grazhdaninom), which means "Today I became an American citizen," the word гражданин (grazhdanin, "citizen") is used in the instrumental case because it denotes a change of status (in this case, possibly from an immigrant to a citizen). However, it's not exclusively used with стать (stat', "to become"), but also other verbs too. For example, "сегодня я проснулся больным" (sevodnya ya prosnulsya bol'nym) means "I woke up sick today" ("больным" is the instrumental of "больной" (bol'noi), "sick").
  • to emphasize an attribute or profession, where in English "as" would be used. For example, "Я работаю переводчиком" (Ya rabotayu perevodchikom) means "I work as a translator" (contrast this with "я - переводчик" (Ya - perevodchik), which means "I'm a translator").
  • (Logically speaking, the profession is the mean by which one does his or her job, hence the reason it's deployed in the instrumental case.)
Though the instrumental case does not exist in many languages, some languages use other cases to denote the mean, 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" (Book IX, line 407 of the Odyssey), which means "he kills me with a bait." Here, "δόλῳ," the dative of "δόλος" ("dolos" - a bait) is used as the instrumental case (the mean or instrument here is, obviously, the bait). In addition to Classical Greek, Latin also uses one of its cases (the ablative case) as the instrumental case, as seen earlier in this article.

Sources

External links

declension (or declination) is the inflection of nouns, pronouns and adjectives to indicate such features as number (typically singular vs. plural), case (subject, object, and so on), or gender.
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Please [improve the article] or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since August 2007.
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This is a list of grammatical cases as they are used by various inflectional languages that have declension.

Place and Time

Note: Most cases used for location and motion can be used for time as well.

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In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the system used to distinguish between the arguments of transitive verbs and those of intransitive verbs. The distinction can be made morphologically (through grammatical case or verbal agreement), syntactically (through word
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An oblique case (Latin: casus generalis) in linguistics is a noun case of synthetic languages that is used generally when a noun is the object of a sentence or a preposition.
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In linguistics, abessive (abbreviated ABESS , from Latin abesse "to be distant"), caritive and privative (abbreviated PRIV ) are names for a grammatical case expressing the lack or absence of the marked noun.
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ablative case (abbreviated ABL ) is a name given to cases in various languages whose common thread is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ.
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In ergative-absolutive languages, the absolutive (abbreviated ABS ) is the grammatical case used to mark both the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb. It contrasts with the ergative case, which marks the subject of transitive verbs.
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The accusative case (abbreviated ACC ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions.
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adessive case (from Latin adesse "to be present") is the fourth of the locative cases with the basic meaning of "on". For example, Estonian laud (table) and laual (on the table), Hungarian asztal and asztalon (on the table).
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The adverbial case is a noun case in the Abkhaz language and Georgian language that has a function similar to the translative and essive cases in Finnic languages. The term is sometimes used to refer to the ablative case in other languages.
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Allative case (abbreviated ALL , from Latin afferre "to bring to") is a type of the locative cases used in several languages. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages which do not make finer distinctions.
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Antessive case[1] is used for marking before something ("before the concert"). The case is found in some Dravidian languages.

References

1. ^ S.

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Apudessive case[1] is used for marking location next to something ("next to the house"). The case is found in Tsez language.

References

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The aversive or evitative case is a grammatical case found in Australian Aboriginal languages that indicates that the marked noun is avoided or feared.

Usage

For example, in Walmajarri:
Yapa-warnti pa-lu tjurtu-karrarla
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The benefactive case (abbreviated BEN ) is a case used where English would use "for", "for the benefit of", or "intended for", e.g. "She opened the door for Tom" or "This book is for Bob".

This meaning is often incorporated in a dative case.
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In linguistics, abessive (abbreviated ABESS , from Latin abesse "to be distant"), caritive and privative (abbreviated PRIV ) are names for a grammatical case expressing the lack or absence of the marked noun.
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The causal or causative case (abbreviated CAUS ) is a grammatical case that indicates that the marked noun is the cause or reason for something.

External links

  • What is causative case?

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This case in Hungarian language combines the Causal case and the Final case: it can express the cause of emotions (e.g. value sb. for sg.) or the goal of actions (e.g. for bread).
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The comitative case is the case that denotes companionship, and is used where English would use "in company with" or "together with". It, and many other cases, are found in the Finnish language, the Hungarian language, and the Estonian language.
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The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. The name is derived from the Latin casus dativus, meaning "the case appropriate to giving"; this was in turn modelled on the Greek
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The delative case (from Latin deferre "to bear or bring away or down") in the Hungarian language can originally express the movement from the surface of something (e.g. "off the table"), but it is used in several other meanings (e.g.
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direct case is the name given to a grammatical case used with all three core relations: the agent of transitive verbs, the patient of transitive verbs, and the agent of intransitive verbs.
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maittain., or "The law is ratified separately in each country". It can be used to distribute the action to frequent points in time, e.g. päivä (day) has the plural distributive päivittäin (each day).
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This case in Hungarian language can express how often something happens (eg. monthly, daily); it can vary with the Distributive case at words of temporal meaning.

This adverb type in Finnish language can express that something happens at a frequent point in time (e.g.
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See Elative for disambiguation.

Elative (from Latin efferre "to bring or carry out") is a locative case with the basic meaning "out of".

In Finnish elative is typically formed by adding "sta/stä", in Estonian by adding "st" to the genitive stem.
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The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.

In such languages, the ergative case is typically marked (most salient), while the absolutive case is unmarked.
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The essive or similaris case carries the meaning of a temporary state of being, often equivalent to the English "as a...".

In the Finnish language, this case is marked by adding "-na/-nä" to the stem of the noun.
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In the Hungarian language this case combines the Essive case and the Formal case, and it can express the position, task, state (e.g. "as a tourist"), or the manner (e.g. "like a hunted animal").
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This case in Hungarian language can express the state, capacity, task in which somebody is or which somebody has (Essive case, e.g. "as a reward", "for example"), or the manner in which the action is carried out, or the language which somebody knows (Modal case, e.g.
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