Gerundio use: Comienza a desintegrando

Question

Every now and then I play adventure games in Spanish as a way of improving upon my language skills. In a game I came across the following sentence:

"De repente, el mecanismo del ascensor comienza a desintegrando, desperdigando sus restos por toda la sala".

This sentence appeared a bit weird to me. I'd prefer using the infinitive 'desintegrar' instead of the gerundio 'desintegrando'.

I know there are examples of verbs being used with the gerundio, the most notable being 'estar' - others being 'seguir', 'continuar', 'andar', 'ir', and 'venir'.

The presence of the preposition 'a' certainly adds to making this construction sound weird to me. I realize that this preposition is related to the first verb 'comienza' and not the gerundio 'desintegrando' (the other way, it could maybe feel like saying "begins to disintegrating" for an English speaker. Obviously wrong and requiring either the removal of 'to' or the replacement of the gerundio by the infinitive 'disintegrate').

Is this just another case of those I mentioned before, only with a verb using the preposition 'a', or is it bad Spanish?

Thanks in advance, Larry

Answer 1

... but is it wrong in either case to use the gerundio (reflexive or not) and not the infinitive?

It´s wrong because of the preceeding "a". Without this "a" the gerund could be used, but if not used in reflexive, as Chileno mentioned, then there would have to be something indicated that the lift is disintagrating, rather than itself.

Answer 2

...comienza a desintegrarse

You were correct but missing that important "se" that I guess in English is implicitly understood.

it begins to dissolve (itself)

Answer 3

Julian is right.

Now, consider the following:

El ascensor está desintegrandose = the elevator is dissolving (itself)

El ascensor está por desintegrarse = The elevator is in the brink of dissolving (itself)

c?

Answer 4

First off, I should of course have used 'gerundio' instead of 'gerund' in my question as the latter of the two is referring to a noun. This has been corrected in my post now.

Oh yes, of course I have to use the reflexive construction when using the infinitive. Thanks for pointing that out

But are you saying that the sentence construction in the game - using the gerundio - is wrong? I guess it is wrong because it is not using the reflexive gerundio as below:

"De repente, el mecanismo del ascensor comienza a desintegrandose, desperdigando sus restos por toda la sala".

... but is it wrong in either case to use the gerundio (reflexive or not) and not the infinitive?

Larry

comienza a desintegrarse o esta desintegrandose in this case is comienza a desintegrarse not a desintegrandose - 000a35ff, Jul 20, 2015

Answer 5

Thanks for clearing things out, chileno and Julian It makes sense to me now.

One last super-quick question, though... The sentence I provided initially (as used in the game):

"De repente, el mecanismo del ascensor comienza a desintegrando, desperdigando sus restos por toda la sala".

Does this sound like something a Spanish speaker could say by accident or does it sound so wrong to the native speaker that it sounds like machine translation?

Thanks a bunch for all your help :-D

Larry

I reallly sounds bad. "comienza a" is A L W A Y S followed by an infinitive. And desintregar(se) in the case of an elevator does not mean "dissolve" "Break down" would be more appropriate English. - Daniela2041, Jul 20, 2015

Thanks, Daniela! Yes I do realize that "dissolve" isn't exactly the best translation in this case ;-) - larryvega, Jul 21, 2015