Direct Object Help!

Question

¡Hola!

I am trying to figure out this direct object problem, and I cannot figure it out for the life of me. I have every other problem correct, but this one throws me for a loop. I am supposed to change the bolded area to a direct object. Here is the problem: No pueden contratar a un grupo musical sin permiso.

I really think it shoud be the following: "No pueden les contratar sin permiso." That comes us wrong I have also tried the following constructions of the verb and the DO: contratarles, contratarle, le contratar, les contratar, me contratar, nos contratar. None of these are correct. What am I missing here?

Answer 1

Those are pretty good attempts. "Un grupo musical" is a masculine singular noun. You have two verbs in the sentence which gives two choices as to where to put the D/O "lo."

Here are the possibilities:

No lo pueden contratar sin permiso.

No pueden contratarlo sin permiso. (I tried to put the "lo" into bold, but couldn't get it.)

Okay, thank you! I see where I was getting confused. I was thinking "un grupo musical" was a plural noun for some reason. Thanks for clarifying. - anti73, Jul 14, 2016

Answer 2

Daniela's answer is, as always, correct, but just to clarify (as you suggest in your response that you were getting confused by the singular/plural issue), there are two other reasons why your attempts were incorrect.

Firstly, all your attempts have used indirect object pronouns instead of direct: your "contrartarle" attempt had the right structure but the wrong object pronoun.

Secondly, as Daniela points out, there are two places the direct object pronoun "lo" can go: before the conjugated verb, or attached to the end of the infinitive. Any attempts that placed the pronoun between "pueden" and "contratar" would have been incorrect even if you had used the correct direct object pronoun.