Random thought

[pne]

I wonder whether there are languages that distinguish comitative with ("I peeled the potatoes with a friend") and instrumental with ("I peeled the potatoes with a knife")—e.g. by having separate cases or separate usual prepositions.

They're the same in English (with), German (mit + dat.), French (avec), Greek (με + acc.), and Russian (с + instr.), as far as I know.

(Now that I've said it, I'm sure there are such languages; only I don't know of an example off-hand.)

Of course, it's possible to distinguish between the two by using synonyms or other word choice (e.g. together with to emphasis comitativity), but as for the basic choice?

Comments

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

In Latin, you would use "cum + ablative" for the first meaning, but just the ablative for the second. In Esperanto, you'd use "kun" for the first meaning, but "per" for the second.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

What a naïve question! Of course there are languages with this distinction; the only question is which ones and what constructions do they use?

Osage verbs take the instrumental prefix i-. Thus hcuke ibraache "I ate it with a spoon" vs. braache žįkažįka ška "I ate it with the children" (lit. "I ate it, the children also").

Korean has distinct instrumental [(으)로 /(u)lo/] and comitative [와 ~ 과 /oa/ ~ koa/] endings, so there's no possibility of confusion. IIRC, Hungarian and Finnish do, too.

Chinese uses distinct co-verbs: 我使刀切紙 wǒ shǐ dāo qiè zhǐ "I cut paper with a knife" (lit. "I use knife, cut paper" or even "I cause [knife cut paper]" vs. 我跟你切紙 wǒ gēn nǐ qiè zhǐ "I cut paper with you" (lit. "I follow you, cut paper").

On the other hand, Turkish has one suffix for both--(i)le--so the polysemy isn't just a shared SAE feature.

[node-ue.livejournal.com]

Japanese does as well, I'm pretty sure, but I'm not 100% sure of the forms because it's been a while since I studied that language.

I'm pretty sure -と(一緒に) = "to (ʔiʃːo ni)" is the comitative ending (where 一緒に = "ʔiʃːo ni" means "together", and と = "to" more often is found in contexts where it would be translated as "and". An example is 家族と旅行した = kazokɯ to rjokoː ʃita, "I went travelling with my family" (lit. family trip do--)

I'm not sure about the instrumental, I just know it's not と = "to".

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

Ubykh is one such language. It uses the suffix -aala to express the comitative, and -awn(ə) for the instrumental.

Also, obviously Basque's comitative case (-(r)ekin) marks the comitative, and the instrumental case (-(e)z) the instrumental. ;)

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

Actually, Russian (and Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian) differentiate the two cases. The first is c + inst, the second is just the object in instrumental case, no preposition.

[tisoi.livejournal.com]

In Tagalog, verbs can have a "social" (or comitative) prefix and also instrumental.

Nakipagbalat ako ng patatas sa kaibigan ko.
"I peeled potatoes with my friend."

Ipinambalat ko ng patatas ang kutsilyo.
"I peeled potatoes with the knife."