Why are the words "a" and "del" necessary?
"El padre abraza a su hija." "Los zapatos están debajo del la cama."
Why are the words "a" and "del" necessary? Why do you not just say "El padre abraza su hija" and "Los zapatos están debajo del la cama"?
3 Answers
Why do you not just say "El padre abraza su hija"
Well, for one thing, the use of the "personal a" (as it is often referred to) helps to avoid certain ambiguities. You see, unlike English, which tends to follow a strict Subject-Verb-Object word order, Spanish is considered a slightly more flexible language in that the subject does not always have to appear before the verb. For example, in English one might say:
José saw his brother
...and we would know that it was José and not his brother who performed the action of seeing based on the fact that his name appears in the place reserved for the subject of a sentence, i.e. it precedes the verb. Because of this rigid syntactic structure, no ambiguity exists (in terms of who is performing an action) in regards to the two following sentences:
José saw his brother. [José acts as subject]
His brother saw José [His brother acts as subject]
On the other hand, in Spanish, certain ambiguities might arise if we were not to include the "personal a" in order to differentiate the direct object from the subject. For example, the placement/absence of the personal a in the sentences below allows us to understand immediately who is performing the action.
(1). Lo vio a su hermano ? He saw his brother [personal a = direct object]
(2). Lo vio su hermano ? His brother saw him [no personal a = subject]
If Spanish did not employ the personal "personal a," however, certain ambiguities might arise making it impossible to know who performed the action.
Of course, logical constraints dictate that such ambiguities are by nature limited to animate objects. For example if we were to replace the noun phrase "su hermano" with some inanimate object, "el carro" for example, we would see that the personal a would be unnecessary, that is, even though "el carro" is not preceded by the personal a, it would be somewhat unreasonable for us to interpret the car as the subject of the sentence as this would leave us with the somewhat absurd expression "The car saw him." :
(1). Lo vio el carro. ?
The car saw him.He saw the car.
Welcome to the forum. This link gives a good explanation, but the basic answer is "because that's the way they say it". The a is called the personal a, and it is required before a direct object that is a person. Debajo de is just a phrase that means under. It should be debajo de la cama, by the way.
I would not think "del la cama" is correct. It should be "de la cama" because a bed is feminine. You will see the more you study Spanish that some things shouldn't be questioned and should simply be repeated until it feels natural. The way they use prepositions in on of those things. As far as "a", this is still something I get wrong sometimes, but I would compare it to some verbs in English that require a "to". You hit the ball "to" your friend. You don't just "hit the ball your friend". This is the same case in Spanish with "abrazar". Hopefully, someone else can give you a rundown, because I would like to read it as well.
