la vs le with denunciar

Question

Today's word of the day "denunciar" has the following sentence as an example. " Por fin llega el momento esperado: Claudia ve a su madre y la confronta, denunciándole por haber abandonado a su propia hija y dejarla pensar que estaba muerta."

Why is it "denunciandole" not "denunciandola"? Doesn't the pronoun refer to the mother who is the direct object? Muchas Gracias.

Hello, welcome to the forum! - rac1, Dec 20, 2012

gracias! soy un nuevo estudiante en español - nmenez, Dec 21, 2012

Answer 1

Denunciándole (or denunciar altogether is the wrong choice of word as maestro and I pointed out). Assuming denunciar was correct, denunciándole or denunciándolo both would work.

La denunció ante la policía. (He reported her to the Police)

Le denunció ante la policia (He reported him or her to the Police). Same difference.

Interesting. I probably rely on the examples on the site here too much. It's very hard to know what's right from them alone, but for me, most citations in the RAE are still a bit hard to read. I'd like to understand just *why* both le and la are valid. - rogspax, Dec 21, 2012

denunciar a alguien (a takes an indirect object... ¿a quién? a ella or a él. If you want to keep it general, you can see le denunció - francobollo, Dec 21, 2012

Answer 2

I think it´s because denunciar, when used without a personal ´a´ is considered instransitive, which means the mother isn´t the direct object, which means she is targeted with an indirect object pronoun. That´s what a read of the translation on this site would reveal.

interestingly,the transitive example using ´a´ works about exactly the opposite from what I´d have expected, since the ´a´ targets the direct object, where as in English (or German) the ´to´ (or zu) which correspond to the ´a´ would be the indirect object.

Another great example of how languages can differ so much.

Interesting analysis. - -cae-, Dec 21, 2012

Answer 3

So what's the direct object then? I would have said denunciándola.