Neuter demonstrative pronouns in Plural

Question

I know this is something I should know already and I'm almost embarrassed to ask, but I can't find anything about it in the reference article. link text

This exercise appeared in "Gramatica Básica del estudiante de español" published by Difusión. I don't know if it's a misprint because it's the first edition that I'm using or if it's actually like this.

(The context is the man has amnesia and his wife is explaining his life to him)

¿Qué ______?

• Son servilletas.

¿Y ________________ tan peludo allí al fondo? ¿Son alfombras?

• No, Victor, no. Son tus perros, Cain y Abel.

I said "son estos" and "aquellos" but the answer is "es esto" and "aquello"

So I would assume that neuter demonstratives were always singular.. or maybe they treat everything as uncountable.. but then I googled ""qué son estos"" in inverted commas and there are 17,800,000 google hits for that exact phrase, so clearly they are plural sometimes.

I did find a similar question here on the forum: http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/8167/neuter-demonstrative-pronouns But it doesn't explain why they used singular "esto" and "aquello" when referring to plural things.

Answer 1

My understanding is:

Neuter demonstrative pronouns are always singular: they have neither gender nor number since they don't refer to specific noun from which to inherit them. Similar sentences exist using the male plural form, and you will find lots of them on google.

Cool so even when I'm pointing to 10 things, I say "What is that" in Spanish instead of "what are those"? - rabbitwho, Jan 2, 2012

Answer 2

• In the first example "es esto" is correct because the neuter form of the demonstrative pronoun should be used. Neuter forms are used when the object is "unknown", so it's neither male, female or plural. So, since the man with amnesia doesn't know what it is, the correct way to ask is "que es esto?".

He doesn't know what it is. If he did know it was "las servilletas", he would then use the feminine plural form of the demonstrative pronoun "estas" as in "quiero éstas"/ I want these.

Another thing to note is that while the masculine singluar form is "este", the masculine plural form is "estos". It may look like the neuter plural but it isn't, remember neuters are always singular.

• The same applies to " and that hairy there thing at the bottom ?" Once again, the correct answer is the neuter form "aquéllo" because at that time the speaker does not know what the object is. He doesn't know if it's masculine, feminine, or plural. It's an unknown thing, and that's when the neuter form of the demonstrative pronoun is used.

Hope this helps.

I have a table that explains this further if you are still interested.

Answer 3

Thanks for that intersting question. I get the part about plural but I am a little puzzled about something else.

I thought neuter forms should not be used to refer to living things. Los perros are living things. Did your amnesiac use the neuter pronoun because he thought they were pillows? When you use a neuter demonstrative pronoun for a living thing it's used as an insult (si esto es un marido que venga Dios y lo vea). Not that that is the situation here.

Wow! i think the writers of this book might have chosen a bad example! - rabbitwho, Jan 2, 2012