Talk:Instrumental case

I work in the morning example
"Я работаю утром" -- I work in the morning.

I, being a native Russian speaker interested in linguistics, have several issues with this as an example of instrumental case. First, in this particular sentence "utrom" is not an instrumental case of "utro". It is an adverb answering to the question "kogda?" (when) which definitely was derived from the instrumental case of "utro", but nevertheless is a different word. You cannot systematically use instrumental case to denote time. E.g. "я работаю часом" (instrumental of час - hour) or "я работаю понедельником" (instrumental of понедельник - Monday) won't work, as it won't work with most other nouns denoting time. "Utrom" is an adverb :)

E.g. very respected Ushakov dictionary has a separate entry for "utrom" marking it as an adverb: http://slovari.yandex.ru/dict/ushakov/article/ushakov/20/us4102411.htm&stpar1=15.290.1.

Second, this example has a subtle double meaning: depending on the context it may mean that I work during one particular morning, or that I work mornings in general, almost every day. This only adds to the confusion.

I suggest to either remove or rework this example, since it does not seem to be in line with current Russian grammar.

eighth case, and instrumental
Who calls it the eighth case and why do they call it such a thing? Also, why have an example (in this case librum stylo scripsi) that has an ablative case and not an instrumental. I understand full well that this is an instrumental ablative, but why not use a russian example or a sanskrit example or an estonian or any of dozens of languages that actually have an instrumental case? I think it is a bit ambiguous to have a page on the instrumental case whose first example is of an ablative. Remember, the instrumental and locative (in the sense in/on, not at) cases were absorbed from PIE into the ablative case in latin. The ablative's primary function is in its name ab+fero, ferre, tuli, latus which was used for separation.--Josh Rocchio 17:47, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Fair warning, I will be deleting the eigth case nonsense, and changing the example to one in a language that actually has an instrumental case properly, unless the author responsibles cites the former, or can well argue the latter . This has been up a few days and has not gotten a response.--Ioshus (talk) 18:14, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I see, the first one is one the to do list, I'll go ahead.--Ioshus (talk) 18:17, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

fifth case
There are two 'fifth' cases in Wiki, vocative and instrumental. Why are cases called by numbers anyway? Different languages have different orders of cases: Slovene (Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Loc, Inst), Croatian (Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Voc, Loc, Inst), Sanskrit (Nom, Voc, Acc, Inst, Dat, Abl, Gen, Loc). If these numbers are taken from Latin then 'eigth' case maybe isn't so incorrect. --Nik 193.77.150.213 17:26, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Tamil
This article implies that Tamil has an instrumental-comitative case, which is not actually true. Tamil uses separate case endings to mark the instrumental (-āl) and the sociative (-ōḍu or -uḍaṉ). However, since Sanskrit uses the instrumental ending with a postposition to mark the sociative, traditional analyses of Tamil grammar classify it as having only one instrumental-comitative case. In fact, Tamil would probably be a better example than even Russian to demonstrate the instrumental case, because Russian uses the instrumental to describe states as well (eg: Я работал переводчиком: I worked as a translator). As far as I know, the Tamil instrumental does not have such usages, and is reserved for objects, real or metaphorical or even grammatical, by means of which something is accomplished. Gokulmadhavan 07:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

English transforming a noun into a past tense verb
It is incorrect to say that this occurs often. Speakers in Britain and New Zealand very rarely replace a noun with a verb. --Dave

Other languages apart from Russian?
Don't all Slavic languages have an instrumental case? Czech certainly does. HairyDan 21:35, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Bulgarian doesn't have this case (it's has just 2 cases!). I'm not sure how it's in macedonian. All other slavic languages have instrumental case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.54.62.200 (talk) 11:12, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's the reason I came into the "Talk" section - I have the impression that the article as a whole is not very thorough; IMHO, we need an exhaustive list of the languages that have an instrumental case, preferably subdivided by language groups, and a discussion of how forms and usage differ from language to language. But, as a start, maybe not bad! Maelli (talk) 12:20, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps the instrumental particle で from the Japanese language could be added as an example. - Nanami-seven-three (talk) 21:45, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Latin *Old English
Yeah, quit basing everything on Latin. Furthermore, where are the Old English examples? (I could have sworn that this was the English language Wikipedia?) —Ƿōdenhelm (talk) 07:45, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

OK a few points here:

1. To the Russian who wants to tell us all how to do things: go and take some English lessons about using articles "the", "a", etc and then come back and preach to us. Your English in the article is sloppy in parts, as you fail to use the articles "the","a","an" correctly before nouns. I am not going to point out where: you do this as a (well needed) exercise for your English.

2. The word "profession" is, as usual, being used incorrectly. "Profession" is a hypernym of "occupation". "Translator" is NOT a profession, but an "occupation". Here is a broader example:

The medical PROFESSION consists of the following OCCUPATIONS: physiotherapist, nurse, doctor, psychologist,etc. These are all OCCUPATIONS within the medical PROFESSION.

OK - gottit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.76.124.71 (talk) 12:16, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
 * In English as people actually speak it, translator is a profession. Please don't mislead non-native speakers with prescriptivism that is not actually followed by the users of the language.--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:57, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Merge with Comitative and Instrumental-comitative case?
I feel that the comitative and instrumental cases are so similar that they should both be covered within one article. Perhaps there could be a section dedicated to how each is used, whether or not there is a distinction. TheWhistleGag (talk) 17:23, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Could it be you feel that they're so similar because the language you speak happens to conflate them into a single preposition? Semantically, they're very different, and most languages in the world make a distinction between the two . I'm not sure having a separate article just for the Instrumental-comitative case is optimal – maybe have one about syncretism between instrumental and comitative, which will cover both languages like English, and ones, like Hungarian, that have a "mixed" system featuring an "instrumental-comitative case"? – Uanfala (talk) 18:29, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * That was actually somewhat of the thought I was having, to be honest. TheWhistleGag (talk) 23:33, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Greenlandic?
Doesn't (West) Greenlandic also have in instrumental case? WiseWoman (talk) 17:01, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Japanese
On Japanese を is being glossed as "do", I think it's actually an ACC particle. Nanami73&#9875; (talk) (contributions) 22:55, 17 December 2023 (UTC)