Choose the prepositional command.
Choose the prepositional command.
"Que pases un buen día." "Los días de verano son agradables."
I'm not sure what prepositional commands are... Can you help me figure it out?
5 Answers
Welcome to the forum.
Can you add your level of English and Spanish to your profile? I assume advanced or fluent on English but I am not sure if you are beginner or intermediate on Spanish.
I have never heard of prepositional commands. However, when you learn the imperative you will learn or have learnt, other ways to structure commands for example using the infinitive.
As bosque says one phrase looks like a statement of fact and the other looks like a command.
In English when leave taking we often say 'Have a good day' or 'Get better'. In English these are commands but effectively they are shorthand for I hope that ... so the structure for tu and usted used the subjunctive pases/pase buen día' or te mejores/se mejore. As you can see when not negative the construction for the third person is the same but for tu a command would be pasa or mejora. I don't know if you are self learning or have a teacher but I assume you are learning how to translate different types of command.
If you look at my profile you will see I am not a fluent Spanish speaker (language levels on profiles helps that assessment) I hope someone can tell us if the phrase you used is a common one.
I have never heard of it termed a prepositional command before, but one of your sentences expresses a desire that something occur with someone (in a sense an indirect command), and the other is a simple indicative statement of fact.
I would assume the prepositional command would be the one that is in a sense asking that something occur (even though in fact it is an expression of desire that something happen, not really a command that it do so).
Try translating both sentences and see which has more of a sense of a "command", and which clearly not.
Returning to this as it's been nagging on my brain. All of your answers have contributed to what I think could be happening here.
Jt: Since the OP didn't answer your question (which is unfortunate since we are trying to answer theirs) I found this exact question in an online quiz. Given the lack of "prepositional command" elsewhere we can probably assume it is either a self coined phrase, a typo, or both.
Bosque: The "que subjunctive" structure matches an indirect command, and I see your reasoning behind how, in a sense, it could be considered such: [I hope that] a good day occurs to you. My only issue is that with "pases" the command seems to be directed directly.
Mardle: I also think (although Daniela could confirm) that the abbreviated "[Espero] que ..." explains best what is occurring with this sentence. It is a hope, that when abbreviated becomes a command, just as it does in English. "[I hope that you] have a good day."
Daniela: Which brings us to a "propositional command." Propositional commands are something normally found in logic studies or religion, but the term could be used to describe a hope that becomes a command: "[I propose that you] have a good day."
It may be a stretch, but perhaps somebody decided to give these type of commands a more distinct title to differentiate them from indirect commands, and either that person, or someone after, incorrectly labelled them "prepositional commands."
Could there be a typo here, could we be looking for a "propositional"command? --like proposing something? Ehhhh. Just a thought. 
This has been asked before. I wish someone would tell us the source. Is there a textbook out there somewhere that thinks that "que" is a preposition?
