Why is ther an "a" in this sentence?
"estaría dispuesto a contribuir en tan digna obra"
shouldn't it be:
"estaría dispuesto contribuir en tan digna obra"?
Thanks very much,
Mitchell
5 Answers
"estaría dispuesto contribuir en tan digna obra"?
Why is ther an "a" in this sentence?
The preposition looks pointless, right? Let's suppress it! But let's suppress it from English too:
I would be willing contribute...
If you can explain to me why the above sentence looks wrong without the preposition "to", you'd be close to explaining why the Spanish sentence you enquire about, looks wrong without the preposition "a" too. The answer is not the same, but the lesson is: languages have a structure that works among natives so they can communicate. If you suppress, add or alter the established conventions, you get wrong grammar.
But if you are not happy with that, I can give you some boring rules: "contribuir en tan digna obra" is an infinitive clause, and grammatically, it works like a noun. The word "dispuesto" is an adjective and in Spanish, a noun cannot modify an adjective without a preposition, so the construction is, by default, wrong. It sounds as bad as "I would be willing that".
Besides the grammatical general rules, "a" is the conventional preposition used with the verb "disponerse (a)", and the derived adjective "dispuesto (a)". This preposition has to be memorized, like in English.
The first one is correct 
Because I am kinda braindead today I will let someone else explain why
Mitchell,
Please check Lazarus' response on the following thread. It might be helpful. I remember this subject from several previous threads.
- ready (preparado) •estar dispuesto, -a a hacer algo -> to be prepared to do something
You need an "a" because you need a preposition.
