direct & indirect objects
I understand and agree with this sentence: El le esta mostrando sus maletas al oficial de aduanas. The "le" is an indirect object and refers to the "oficial de aduanas". It is required as per standard Spanish grammar. "Sus maletas" is the direct object because it receives the action from the verb. I completely disagree with this sentence: El le esta pegando al agente de inmigracion. In this sentence "al agente de inmigracion" is the direct object because the verb is directly affecting the "agente". How can they use "le" since "le" is indirect? If i remove "al agente de inmigracion" the thought is incomplete and we must have the direct object to make the sentence complete. another example: ?por que le estan pegando a ese carro? The direct object is "carro" there is no indirect object yet the word "le" is included. How is this possible? What is the rule that governs this usage?
1 Answer
"El le esta pegando al agente de inmigración"
Agente de inmigración is actually not the direct object. When using "pegar", the direct object is the tool that does the hitting and the indirect object is what is getting hit.
"El le esta pegando un golpe al agente de inmigración"
Does that help a bit? I gave a revision of that translation more specific so you can see what I'm trying to say better. That's the problem when tryign to compare two languages to each other - no matter how similar they appear to be for the most part there always is a difference. I try to do what you do all the time but you just gotta look closer into it.
