Why is "le" needed in this sentence
I am trying to understand the use of direct and indirect objects in Spanish.
The sentence is as follows.
El perro estaba acostado de espaldas felizmente mientras ella le hacía caricias en su vientre.
Why is "le" needed?
3 Answers
Hola: I just copied an answer that I gave a long time ago. First a translation (word for word I hope) of your sentence:
"The dog was happily lying on his back while she to him (thats the "le" part) made caresses on his belly". Spanish is the only language I know of, that will use an indirect object pronoun and the direct object itself in the same sentence.
Here is a little more on the subject of indirect object pronouns and their use. It is rather complicated and it usually takes me two class periods before my students can get the idea completely right.
Indirect object pronouns can have several meanings. Take “te” for example. “Te” can mean to you, for you from you and even “yourself”
Examples with “te”
Yo te doy un libro. I give a book to you
Yo te hago la tarea de español. I do the Spanish assignment for you.
Yo te robo el dinero. I rob the money from you. (English speakers will say “I steal your money”
Tú te miras en el espejo. You look at yourself in the mirror. (this is reflexive usage)
Tú te lavas las manos. You wash (for) yourself the hands. (this is also reflexive)
These same constructions can be used for all the indirect object pronouns. (me, te, le, les, nos, os)
Le and les and the “redundant” indirect object.
Le can mean to him, to her and to usted and sometimes “to it” Sometimes what we call a “clarifier” is needed, such as a mí, a ti, a él, a ella or a usted. Sometimes a person’s name is used as a clarifier or even a person word such as man, woman, teacher, etc.
Examples.
A él le doy un beso. (“le” means I’m giving a kiss to somebody, but the ‘a él’ shows that it is ‘to him’)The “A” here means “to” “A” can also mean “for” or “from” depending on context.
Why don’t we say simply? “Doy un beso a él” Ihave no idea as to why. This is why English speakers who write text books call this the “redundant” le. Meaning from the English point of view it’s unnecessary.
In author’s Cervantes day it was unnecessary as well. This is a relatively recent development in Spanish.
Further examples:
A María su mamá le compró un nuevo vestido. Maria’s mom bought her a new dress (-bought a new dress for her)
A Roberto, el ladrón le robó el dinero. (The thief stole the money from Roberto.)
Now one use for “se” besides the reflexive,( which I’m not going to discuss here ) is a replacement for “le” or “les” when a direct object is also in play. It is used thus:
¿Le diste el libro a Adela? --You would expect “ Sí, yo ‘le” (to her) lo (it) di. ( Yes I gave it to her) But “le” gets replaced by “se” thus: ¿Le diste el libro a Adela? Sí. Se lo di. (Did you give the book to Adela? Yes, I gave it to her.
¿Les dio la maestra la lección a los alumnos? (Did the teacher give the lesson to the pupils?)
Sí Se la dio. ( Yes, she gave it to them—“se” replacing “les”
There is much more that could be said about when using these pronouns with an infinitive or with a present participle, but I’m just confining my remarks to simple sentences with only one verb.
I hope I made this understandable to you.
'le' is the object being caressed (the dog).
Not being a native speaker, I cannot say it is "needed", it might be, but I can't confirm more than it seems normal to include it. So as to why it it there, and why I would include it if I were writing it.
Spanish speakers seem to like including indirect object pronouns almost as much as they seem to like not including subject pronouns. Hence the redundant indirect object pronouns that are not always (but are sometimes) needed but usually are more natural. This however is not one of those cases.
Here you are simply saying:
The dog was lying on its back happily while she was giving it carresses on its belly.- or she was giving carresses to it on its belly might even be closer.
Even in English it sounds more natural to include it- you could say; she was giving carresses on its belly, but it sounds a bit weird to me. It does sound okay to say she was carressing its belly without it sounding weird, but thats not the way it is written in Spanish. I probably would have included le even if I used acaraciar in Spanish however, but I don't know what a native would do.
Maybe a native speaker could also provide some perspective.
