... a la aplicación de métodos

Question

I thought feminine words starting with 'a' or 'ha' will change the 'la' to 'el'.

But now I was reading a text (Rocío Rosales Ortega, Tratado de geografía humana, page 132), where I came over that sentence:

"Esta crítica lo llevó a proponer la adopción plena del positivismo. Este cambio epistemológico se profundizaría con el llamado de los geógrafos estadounidenses a la aplicación de métodos cuantitativos y a la elaboración de leyes y explicaciones generales."

Why does the 'la' not change to 'el' in these cases?

Answer 1

It just depends on where the stress falls in the word. In word like "agua" and "hacha" the stress falls on the first "a" in both. Because the "a" in the definite article "la" is stressed and the first "a" in "hacha" or "agua" is stressed the result is two stressed "a" sounds together which sounds bad, so the article changes to "el". In your example no change is needed because the stress in "aplicación" falls on the "o" as indicated by the accent.

• Exactly! - gintar77 Aug 18, 2011