These three cases are all rare; the instructive and the comitative appear
mainly in fixed expressions like idioms.
The abessive ending is -tta ~ -ttä, which is added to the inflectional stem
in the singular and plural and causes consonant gradation. Its meaning is
‘without’.
Hän lähti ulkomaille raha/tta ja passi/tta.
He went abroad without money and without a passport.
Hänet tuomittiin syy/ttä.
He was condemned without cause.
Joka kuri/tta kasvaa, se kunnia/tta kuolee.
He who grows up without discipline will die without honour.
The preposition ilman ‘without’ is usually used instead of the abessive; it
takes the partitive, e.g. ilman raha/a ‘without money’, ilman passi/a
‘without a passport’.
The instructive ending is -n. It occurs almost exclusively in a few fixed
plural expressions.
om/i/n silm/i/n with (one’s) own eyes
kaik/i/n puol/i/n in all respects
palja/i/n pä/i/n with bare head
nä/i/llä ma/i/n in these parts (areas)
kaks/i/n käs/i/n with both hands
The comitative ending is -ine-, and this is always followed by a possessive
suffix. Because the -i- of the ending is in fact a fossilized plural -i-(cf. §26),
there is no difference between the comitative singular and plural. The
meaning of the case is ‘with, accompanied by’.
128 Finnish: An Essential Grammar
Läsnä oli Viljo Kohonen vaimo/ine/en.
Present was Viljo Kohonen with his wife.
Läsnä olivat Viljo Kohonen ja Esko Kallio vaimo/ine/en.
Present were Viljo Kohonen and Esko Kallio, accompanied by their
wives.
Rauma on mukava kaupunki vanho/ine talo/ine/en ja kape/ine
katu/ine/en.
Rauma is a pleasant town with its old houses and narrow streets.
