Interrogative verb-subject reversal with Gustar?
I've rewritten my question to avoid confusing still more people with my multiple errors and unusual usages:
As an indicative, one might say, "Tu vendes estos./You sell these." and can form an interrogative by reversing the verb and subject, "¿Vendes tu estos?/(Do) You sell these?"
Can this be done with "subject-preceding" verbs like "gustar" and "bastar," and how would the sentence be structured? E.g., rearranging "Te bastan estos./These are sufficient for you," (putting aside whether this is the best way to say it), is there a grammatically correct phrase along the lines of, "¿Te estos bastan?" to mean "(Are) These sufficient for you?"
Original Posting: As an indicative, one might say, "Tu queras ellos./You want them." and can form an interrogative by reversing and hyphenating the verb-subject, "Queras-tu ellos?/You want them?" Is this done with "subject-preceding" verbs like "gustar," etc., and how would the sentence be structured? E.g., could one write, "Te ellos-gustan?" to mean "(Do) they please you?"
Thanks,
JF
5 Answers
This is a good question, but again, to be grammatically correct the person will always go before the gustar-type verb and the the object will always go after.
Using your sentence, "te bastan estos," te will always be first, bastan will always be between the actor and subject and estos will always be after bastan. This is regardless of the fact that it is a question or statement.
This is just the fact of the nature of this type of verb.
- ?A Juan le gustan las manzanas?
- Me falta un carro
- A ella le caen bien ellos
- etc.
Does this help or am I missing what I am supposed to be addessing?
There are a lot of questions here, I'll see what I can do. In the future try organizing your thoughts a little better so that we can better help you.
First I would say that "Tú quieres ellos" sounds really weird because you are using "ellos" as an indirect object instead of a direct object, so what I imagine you are trying to say is "tú se quieres" which means "you love them".
In questions people frequently move the subject (or actor) into position after the verb, but it isn't necessary. I've never heard of someone hyphenating the verb and subject though. I'm not the most experienced in Spanish though, so I could be wrong and this could be a thing.
Finally, to actually answer your question, no. With verbs like gustar the actor is ALWAYS before the verb and the subject, which is actually the noun after gustar, is always after.
¿A tú, te gustan ellos?
I hope that this helped.
¿Te gusta esto? ¿Te basta esto? ¿ Los quieres? -- Do you want them? ( things)
¿ Quieres a ellos ? // Les quieres? Do you love them? ( persons)
Actually, I don't understand the question properly. French is no great help with Spanish, in my humble opinion.
Silly me, the hyphen is in French.
Although I assume that you guys are correct, for clarity, I'll rephrase my question (hopefully, free of off-putting usages and silly errors!): As an indicative, one might say, "Tu vendes estos./You sell these." and can form an interrogative by reversing the verb and subject, "¿Vendes tu estos?/(Do) You sell these?"
Can this be done with "subject-preceding" verbs like "gustar" and "bastar," and how would the sentence be structured? E.g., rearranging "Te bastan estos./These are sufficient for you," (putting aside whether this is the best way to say it), is there a grammatically correct phrase along the lines of, "¿Te estos bastan?" to mean "(Are) These sufficient for you?"
JF
No, it doesn't sound right. You can't put ellos there. A good verb for liking people is caer/caerse.
Te gustan? Are they pleasing to you? (Do you like them?) - Note that this use of gustar has to do with attraction to them.
One of the better words to use here is: le cae bien John.(She likes John as a friend) (he is likeable to her).
Me cae bien. I like him. (He is likeable to me).
The present conjugation for the tú form of querer = quieres
