Comitative Case - Finnish

Finnish

In the Finnish language, the comitative is rare and seldom used in spoken Finnish. The suffix -ne is used alone only when it is an attribute of another word, otherwise additional possessive suffix must be added, such as -ne+en, e.g. suurine vuorineen "with its large mountains". The Finnish literary comitative expresses only possessions or attributes, and as such does not replace the preposition "with". It has only a plural, which is, paradoxically, used to denote both the singular and the plural, e.g. tyttö koirineen "girl with her dog(s)".

In the expressions corresponding to the Estonian ones above, the adessive may be used, e.g. lehdillä "with leaves" or laivalla "by boat". The idea of "being in company" is expressed with genitive + kanssa, e.g. tyttö koiran kanssa "girl with dog". In spoken Finnish, this abbreviates to a clitic very similar to the Estonian comitative, -nkaa (via -nkans). It is debatable if this is a grammatical case, because it does not obey vowel harmony; that is, there is no form -nkää. Some dialects do have such a form, however.