Re: Two meanings of "with"


"Harlan Messinger" <hmessinger.removethis@xxxxxxxxxxx> 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.

Does this merger appear outside of the IE family? Is it present in any languages where accompaniment and instrumentality are represented via inflection rather than via prepositions?

It's definitely not present in Australian.

The vast majority of Australian languages have an instrumental case. The suffix involved has the same form as that of the ergative case; in some it's the same as the locative. Most common are "-lu, -dhu, -Ngu" which seem to date back to proto-Australian.

Almost all Australian languages have a cominative suffix. In most languages, its basic meaning is "having" -- attributes (having a beard, having hunger, (place) having water), accompaniment ("man *carrying* boomerang', "woman *and* children are coming"), temporal ("we go there *in* winter"). The comitative suffix varies between languages, but never (that I know of) coincides with instrumental. (It does coincide with locative in two languages).

Australian languages never use prepositions for these purposes. (Most don't have adpositions at all.)

John.

.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Two meanings of "with"
    ... Is it present in any languages where accompaniment and instrumentality are represented via inflection rather than via prepositions? ... Japanese can use the postposition for accompaniment, and the postposition for instrumentality, but longer constructions may be possible, such as: ... I can't think of any examples in Chinese or Japanese where the same term/construction might be used for both. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Two meanings of "with"
    ... 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 ... gamat, 'god comes here with gods), ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Two meanings of "with"
    ... How about "Are you angry with me?", where it's neither accompaniment ... nor instrumentality? ... idiomatic usage in Malayalam but it isn't a merger since the standard ... avaLE koNDu ennA ceyyuvArnu? ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Two meanings of "with"
    ... 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." ... Is it present in any languages where accompaniment and instrumentality are represented via inflection rather than via prepositions? ...
    (sci.lang)
Quantcast