Concomitance, a subdomain of participation, comprises itself a set of relations of concomitance, among them the instrumental and the comitative. These are participant roles which may, again, be coded by verbs or by relational nouns. And again, they are coded by verbs in Mandarin. Old Chinese 庸 yōng ‘use, employ’ is a plain full verb. Modern Mandarin 用 yòng still means ‘use’ ().
| . | Nǐ | hùi | bù | hùi | yòng | diànnǎo? |
| Mand | thou | understand | NEG | understand | use | computer |
| Can you use a computer? | (Wiktionary s.v. 用) | |||||
The same verb is used as a coverb with instrumental function in a serial construction ().
| Wǒ | yòng | kuàizi | chī+fàn. | |
| Mand | I | use | chopstick | eat+rice |
| I eat with chopsticks. | (Wiktionary s.v. 用) | |||
The same constraints as for zài apply: If there is any aspect specified in such a clause, it goes with the core verb, not with the coverb. This is, consequently, underway to a preposition.