Instrumental Case - General Discussion

General Discussion

The instrumental case appears in this Russian sentence:

Here, the inflection of the noun indicates its instrumental role – the nominative перо changes its ending to become пером.

In Modern English, the word why is one instance of an etymologically instrumental declension. Though not commonly known to be of pronominal origin, it was, in fact, inherited from Old English hwȳ, which was the declension of hwæt (now what) in the Old English instrumental case – a grammatical feature rare even in Old English. The modern instrumental case (as present in why) does not bear the meaning of instrument, but of purpose, cause, or reason: rather, the closely related form how is used to express instrument, way, or means. In nominal use, Modern English expresses the instrumental meaning by use of adverbial phrases that begin with the words with, by, or using then followed by the noun indicating the instrument:

I wrote the note with a pen.

I wrote the note (by) using a pen.

Technical descriptions often use the phrase "by means of", which is similar to "by use of", as in:

I wrote the note by means of a pen.

I wrote the note by use of a pen.

This can be replaced by "via", which is a Latin instrumental ablative of the nominative (viā) via, meaning road, route, or way. In the ablative this means by way of. The English suffix "-wise", meaning way, performs the same function, although in most cases it would be reserved for poetic effect:

I wrote the note penwise.

The above sentence structures, however, can be altogether avoided in English by transforming the noun into a past-tense verb, e.g. "I penned the note."

The instrumental case appears in Old English, Old Saxon, 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, locative case if not, to mark the same category, or comitative case (Estonian). 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). In most declension paradigms, the instrumental case in Russian can generally be distinguished by the -ом ("-om") suffix for most masculine and neuter nouns, the -ою/-oй ("-oyu"/"-oy") suffix for most feminine nouns and -ами ("-ami") for any of the three genders in the plural.

However, in Russian, as with many Slavic languages, the instrumental case is not only used to denote the means of a certain action, but also:

• to denote a time when an action occurs ("during"). For example, in the sentence "я работаю утром" (ya rabotayu utrom), which means "I work in the morning"; the word утро (utro, "morning") in its instrumental case denotes the time in which the action (in the case of this example, "working") takes place ("in the morning").
• 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 means by which one does his or her job, hence the reason it's deployed in the instrumental case.)
• to denote the agent in a passive voice construction. E.g.: "Книга написана мною" ("The book was written by me"). Here, "мною" ("by me") is simply the instrumental case version of the pronoun "I, me", and the sentence is structured in the passive voice (as it also is in its English translation).

Though the instrumental case does not exist in many languages, some languages use other cases to denote the means, 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 means or instrument here is, obviously, the bait). In Latin the instrumental case has merged with the ablative, thus the ablative case has the same functions. For example, "ipso facto" can be translated as 'by the fact itself'; the ablative case can also be used, as in oculīs vidēre, "to see with the eyes".