Sentence Structure in Spanish

Question

I know adjective placement can change the meaning of a sentence in Spanish (un raro metal = a rare metal; un metal raro = a strange metal) but I've also been looking other examples of sentence structure.

This site (enforex.com) says that all that really matters is the verb (the action) and the subject (the person or thing doing the action) and the rest of the sentense can be put almost anywhere else:

• Pedro trabaja en una biblioteca (Pedro works in a library) = subject + verb + rest of the sentence
• Trabaja Predo en una biblioteca (Works Pedro in a library) = verb + subject + rest of the sentence
• En una biblioteca trabaja Pedro (In a library works Pedro) = rest of the sentence + verb + subject
• Trabaja en una biblioteca Pedro (Works in a library Pedro) = verb + rest of the sentence + subject

Just as the site says, some of the direct translations sound very odd in English. Is this right or am I missing something?

Answer 1

Great question! The correct grammatical structure in Spanish should be:

Subject + Verb + Complement (a variety of grammatical options, including adverbs, prepositions, direct or indirect objects, pronouns, etc.)

From your examples, here's my opinion:

1) Perfect - Emphasis is on Pedro 2) Sounds like a question, but you would be understood if you said it as a statement. Emphasis is on what action Pedro does. 3) Emphasis is on library not Pedro, so it's fine 4) Sounds odd. But again, it would be easily understood.

Answer 2

En una biblioteca trabaja Pedro (In a library works Pedro) = rest of the sentence + verb + subject

This is more natural when used as a question, although it can be found as a statement in literature. The emphasis could be either "biblioteca" or "Pedro" depending on the intonation used.

Trabaja en una biblioteca Pedro (Works in a library Pedro) = verb + rest of the sentence + subject

This is not odd at all if spoken as a question. The emphasis is only on "Pedro."

Answer 3

In my humble and occaisionally incorrect opinion, you are correct on your major points. Spanish syntax is substantially "looser" than that of English. This at times produces valid Spanish sentences that can't really be translated word for word into English without sounding strange or even descending into gibberish.