"Le" echa pimienta a la ensalada.

Question

In my Spanish 102 textbook, the following sentence is shown with a lady putting freshly-ground pepper on a salad:

Le echa pimienta a la ensalada.

I believe the word "le" refers to la ensalada. But our textbook only showed examples of indirect objects in reference to persons. Is it correct to use "le" to refer to an inanimate object (the salad)?

Thanks for any help you can give me!

Answer 1

I asked sort of the same thing here:

http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/220471/is-the-indirect-object-pronoun-needed-when-the-indirect-object-noun-is-a-thing

Hopefully that will be of some help.

Thanks Tosh! - Alicia-53, Jan 29, 2012

Answer 2

´LE´ is used instead of 'ELLA LE', It's refered to the lady. 'LE' is a pronoun.

Nope. It refers to "la ensalada". - Tosh, Jan 29, 2012