Instrumental case

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In linguistics, the instrumental case indicates that a noun is the instrument or means by which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. The noun may be either a physical object or an abstract concept.

For example, in this Latin sentence:

librum stylo scripsi.

the inflection of the noun indicates its instrumental role -- the nominative stylus changes to the ablative (the ablative of means) stylo. English, lacking an instrumental case, might use a preposition (usually with) to express the same meaning:

I wrote the book with a pen.

Remnants of this practice often come occur in English from the practice simply changing nouns into past-tense verbs; "I penned the book."

The instrumental case appears in Old English, Georgian, Sanskrit, and the Balto-Slavic languages. An instrumental/comitative case is arguably present in Turkish and other Altaic languages. Also, Uralic languages reuse the adessive case where available, or locative case if not, to mark the same category. 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".