In grammar, the sociative case is a grammatical case in Uralic languages such as Finnish and Hungarian; as well as Tamil, and Malayalam languages that can express the person in whose company (cf. Latin ) an action is carried out, or to any belongings of people which take part in an action (together with their owners). In other words, it is a case "that typically marks accompaniment or association." but in Modern English language, the speaker must use context to convey the tone of the message of pejorative association, as in the lyrics of Invisible Sun by The Police: "I face the day with my head caved in: Looking like something that the cat brought in."
Hungarian
In Hungarian, this case is usually denoted by the suffixes -stul and -stül, depending on vowel harmony; it can also have a -mal ending.
The use of the sociative case kölyköstül ("with her kids") signifies the speaker's contempt. The case appears also in some commonly used expressions, which survived the general obsolescence of the sociative case:
- Ruhástul ugrott a medencébe "He jumped into the pool with his clothes on"
- A fenevad szőröstül-bőröstül felfalta a védtelen kis nyuszit "The monster devoured the helpless little bunny neck and crop".
Tamil
In some spoken dialects of Tamil, the sociative case takes the endings () or ().
It is related to the instrumental case but not identical to it. In contrast to the sociative case, the instrumental case usually denotes the means of action and takes the ending ().
Harold F. Schiffman noted the similarities between the sociative cases of Tamil and Hungarian.