A grammar question: Al descubrir
"Soraya casi perdió la fe al descubrir que tenía cáncer de seno." We know that this is a noun clause (que tenía cáncer de seno) ,but we have a question about how to explain "al descubrir". And what is the antecedente of the noun clause? Thank you!
2 Answers
al descubrir = upon discovering
The infinitive is used for what we say in English with gerunds.
We know that this is a noun clause (que tenía cáncer de seno) ,but we have a question about how to explain "al descubrir". And what is the antecedente of the noun clause? Thank you!
There is no antecedente. The preposition "a" is used, among other things, to indicate the place or time in which something happens:
a.
7. prep. Precisa el lugar o tiempo en que sucede algo. Le cogieron a la puerta. Firmaré a la noche.
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Some examples are:
a la noche
a la mañana siguiente
al medio día
All of them typically take an and a noun (with optional complements). Well, the infinitive in Spanish is also a noun, so:
al amanecer (amanecer also appears as a noun in the dictionary)
al llegar
al aterrizar
