Sentence structure help please!!
I usually get most of my answers from this site so I figured I would sign up to ask for some help. I would really like someone to explain sentence structure to me. I know sometimes in English it sounds as though a sentence in Spanish is "backwards," but its really not. I think I would have an easier time speaking if I couldnt understand sentence structure better. can someone please explain with some examples? Any help would be appreciated!!
4 Answers
That's a fairly broad subject to tackle. I imagine that an adequately detailed analysis of Spanish syntax could fill up several tomes. In any case, there are a few glaring distinctions that can be drawn between English and Spanish. Here are a few of them.
Spanish is a much more highly inflected language than English
The Spanish verb system shows a much greater degree of inflection than English, to the point that subject pronouns have become superfluous in most (though not all) cases. Consider that in Spanish, the following sentence would be reasonable:
Eres inteligente (You are smart)
In this example we can see that, despite the lack of subject pronoun, the verb "ser" exhibits a specific form (conjugation) that leaves no question as to who the verb's subject is. In English, as I'm sure you are aware, this is not the case. That is, a similar sentence would be considered ungrammatical:
Are intelligent (this sentence lacks a subject)
This is not to say that English lacks inflection altogether; however, it is not inflected to such a point that the subject pronoun becomes unnecessary. Lets take the verb "to have" for example:
Present Tense (Indicative)
I have (tengo)
you have (tienes/tiene usted)
she/he has (tiene)
they have (tenéis)
we have (tenemos)
We can see that in the English version, the only difference occurs in the 3rd person singular where the verb modulates from "have" to "has." This lack of inflectional variety requires English to be more strict in terms of both subject pronoun usage and word order within a sentence. This brings up another key difference:
English, in all but a few cases, tends to follow a strict subject-verb-object word order. With Spanish; however, word order is not so strict with the end result being that in English we might say something like:
Carlos loves his wife more than his dog
However, it would be considered ungrammatical to reverse the order of the subjects and direct objects as such:
His wife loves Carlos more than my dog
Even less acceptable would probably be to place the verb in front of the subject like so:
Loves his wife Carlos more than his dog or Loves Carlos his wife more than his dog
The reason that such sentences appear odd has to do with the fact that word order, in English, helps us to key in on who is directing the action (i.e. the subject or, in this case, who is doing the loving) and who is being directly effected by the action (i.e. the direct object or, in this case, who is being loved by the subject). With Spanish, we have certain markers, inflectional and otherwise, which key us in on which elements are which in terms of subject and object. This allows for much greater flexibility in terms of word order. For example, any of the following sentences would be reasonable translations into Spanish (although the emphasis might change a bit from sentence to sentence):
Carlos ama a su esposa más que a su perro
Ama Carlos a su esposa más que a su perro
A su esposa Carlos la ama más que a su perro
A su esposa la ama Carlos más que a su perro
Más ama Carlos a su esposa que a su perro
Placement of object (both indirect and direct object) pronouns is also a key feature that differs from Spanish to English. Generally speaking, English object pronouns occur after the verb; whereas, Spanish subject pronouns generally occur before the verb or appear may even affixed to the end of the verb. For example, consider some of the following (direct objects in bold and indirect objects in italics):
Lo amo (I love him)
Dáme*lo (Give it *to me)
No quiero que me lo des (I don't want you to give it to me)
One piece of advice (to take or leave as you like). I would suggest that spending your time reading and listening to Spanish (of a level that provides enough context to be at least partially intelligible) would be of more use than focusing to heavily on abstract grammar concepts. It's not that the study of grammar is in and of itself unrewarding or a waste of time completely; it's just that a more intuitive understanding of the Spanish language (especially in regards to acceptable sentence structures) is more likely to be developed and developed to a higher degree by repetitive exposure to these structures in meaningful context. That is, it's probably more advantageous in the long run to listen for meaning and gradually acquire an understanding of more typical sentence structures than to try to study various forms and structures in isolation and then attempt to tack on meaning in a cookie cutter manner.
Sentence structure can be very complicated and isn't always the same. here are different sentence constructions, as there are in English. It would be best to study the different parts of Spanish grammar so can recognize structure very easily. Once you do that, you'll be able to look at words, and at least, be able to discern which words or phrases are nouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions, ect.
Do the lessons offered here and soon you will understand the reasoning behind the word order. An example would be that adjective almost always follow their nouns rather than our English way - The red apple = la manzana roja. The cotton jacket= la chaqueta algodón.
