Re: Two meanings of "with"

Helmut Richter wrote:
On Sat, 2 Sep 2006, Harlan Messinger wrote:

It occurred to me that in each of the Indo-European languages I know, the word
for "with", whatever its derivation may be, covers both accompaniment ("The
boy is with his mother." "I'm going with David.") and instrumentality ("He cut
his fish with a knife.") This holds for German "mit", Spanish "con", French
"avec", and Catalan "amb". I can see why there would be a connection between
these two modes, but it also seems to me not to be a necessary one.

Of the German examples, the first one is wrong: "Der Junge ist bei seiner Mutter." The same example in French is wrong when his mother's place is meant in which case the preposition would be "chez". One would have to check to what extent the similarity is only because of fuzzy semantics of non-instrumental "with".

True, but in that case, substitute, "The boy is traveling with his mother."
.

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