¿Cuánto cuesta + Verbo?
Do I need "para" between "Cuánto cuesta" and a verb? Por ejemplo, "¿Cuánto cuesta para participar?" Gracias.
4 Answers
"Cuánto cuesta participar" = "How much does participating cost"
"Cuánto cuesta para participar" = "How much does [it] cost in order to participate"
Ok, I tried to write a nonsensical translation, and I've just realized that it is perfect in English, hehe. The option with "para" makes no sense whatsoever in Spanish.
The subject, "it", is understood in sentence 2 because of the conjugation of the verb "costar"
Spanish does not have the anticipatory "it" that English uses. In "How much does it cost to participate?", that "it" refers to the subject, which is "to participate"; both are the same, which is why many grammarians call that "it" dummy or redundant. In this sense, English and Spanish have similar structures, except for the absence of the "it" in Spanish, which would be a redundant and acompletely wrong pronoun. In Spanish, "¿Cuánto cuesta participar" is a simple sentence: "Participar" is the subject, "cuesta" is the verb, and "cuánto" asks for a price.
However, in the second version with "in order to", the sentence in English relies on the "it" to make sense. In "How much does it cost in order to enter", technically speaking, "in order to enter" is unlikely to be the subject (unless English subjects can have prepositions), but still, it is obvious that the "it" refers to that. Natives of all languages don't care about grammatical subtleties, so they just go to what make sense to them. In English it sounds right to say that something costs this or that... in order to this or that, right? Well, that sentence says that... at the end. However, at the beginning it has an "it" that suggests that later in the sentence we'll find out what we mean by "it".
This is a well known phenomenon: the "distance" between "it" and the last part of the sentence means that natives will eventually lose track of their connection, and they'll begin to "break" old rules (that probably no longer apply nowadays) because they just want to speak, not to follow grammars. In Spanish you can find a similar distance between an anticipatory pronoun and its referent in "Le dije a mis padres..." (in theory it should be "les", to agree with "a mis padres), where the distance between "le" and "a mis padres" is gradually less and less observed by natives.
So, Spanish has no "it" anticipating anything, and since there is no "distance" between two parts of the sentence, the grammatical rule is followed very strictly. "¿Cuánto cuesta...?" should be followed by the subject, and subjects don't have prepositions, so if you continue with "para...", that's fine, but you still need a subject, you still need to name the thing whose price is being asked about. The sentence with "para", basically, has no subject, and yet it has a weird object with "para" that indicates that an unknown subject will be given to someone called "in order to participate". A total mess!
Summing up: in English "it" can take assume the role of subject, even though its meaning is deduced from an additional phrase that is not technically the subject. It is a grammatical mismatch that makes sense to natives. In Spanish there is no "it", and also no subject, so the sentence makes no sense.
Does it make sense?
You can just say "¿cuánto cuesta participar?"."participar" is the subject that way, so it would translate to "How much does participating cost?" "para" is not NEEDED in this example, but adding it would not be wrong, because then it would say "How much does it cost in order to participate? Either way would be understood.
because then it would say "How much does it cost in order to participate? Either way would be understood.
Without "para", it would be the subject indeed, but with "para", the sentence would not be the one you suggested, but even worse:
How much does cost in order to participate?
Notice that in the "wrong" Spanish sentence with "para" there is no subject either.
Lazarus, could you please help us here?
"Cuánto cuesta participar" = "How much does participating cost"
"Cuánto cuesta para participar" = "How much does [it] cost in order to participate"
The subject, "it", is understood in sentence 2 because of the conjugation of the verb "costar"
the sentence would not be the one you suggested, but even worse:
What did you mean by even worse? Is sentence 2 already unacceptable as I have written it?
Notice that in the "wrong" Spanish sentence with "para" there is no subject either.
What did you mean by either? What are you comparing?
