Subject/Verb orderAdded by Kent to his previous question [posted about six days ago] entitled Word Order > He went on to ask: "What about noun verb order? An example would be Aquí la gente sale mucho por la noche - or Aquí sale la gente mucho por la noche".
From David M - [an attempt to throw some light on the matter]:
My grammar book [by Butt & Benjamin] devotes the whole of its chapter 37 to discussing word order, in addition to mentioning it several times elsewhere.
It says: "Adverbial phrases of place especially favour the 'Verb before Subject' order" - which would suppport the option: "Aquí sale la gente mucho ...".
It also says: "When the verb is intransitive, inversion is usual"; [i.e., verb first].
It adds that these 'rules' are not rigid.
Reply from Kent:
More good info David. Gracias otra vez. Claramente hay algunas áreas grises
Hi Silvia. In the example, "Tal vez yo haya estudiado mucho para el examen," the English translation says, "I might have studied a lot for the exam". Is that "I might have studied a lot" in the sense "maybe I would have studied a lot [if I had time?"] Or "Perhaps (it possible) I studied a lot for the exam"? Both?
Oh wait, after writing this I realized that the sentence perhaps means, "I should have studied a lot for the exam.” We Americans almost never use the word “might” in this sense. I’m not sure how much you Brits (all British residents) do. Is this the sense in which it is used here?
Why is "Te los voy a comprar." only nearly correct? Isn't this structure as correct as "Voy a comprartelos."?
Added by Kent to his previous question [posted about six days ago] entitled Word Order > He went on to ask: "What about noun verb order? An example would be Aquí la gente sale mucho por la noche - or Aquí sale la gente mucho por la noche".
From David M - [an attempt to throw some light on the matter]:
My grammar book [by Butt & Benjamin] devotes the whole of its chapter 37 to discussing word order, in addition to mentioning it several times elsewhere.
It says: "Adverbial phrases of place especially favour the 'Verb before Subject' order" - which would suppport the option: "Aquí sale la gente mucho ...".
It also says: "When the verb is intransitive, inversion is usual"; [i.e., verb first].
It adds that these 'rules' are not rigid.
Reply from Kent:
More good info David. Gracias otra vez. Claramente hay algunas áreas grises
How will be equivocar for el/ella ?
Hello,
It seems to me this is more of a literal translation?
Does it meant rather: "You went the wrong way."?
Or: "You walked on the wrong side of the road." ?
Thank you for your consideration.
Nicole
In the lesson "Use Hace + length of time + que + El Indefinido " we have this example:
-¿Dónde está Jaime? -Hace dos horas que se fue.
-Where is Jaime? -He left two hours ago.
In the lesson "When to use the perfect tense versus the simple past in European Spanish (Perfecto vs Indefinido)" we have this example:
Note: If you talk about time ago using hace then the tense will still depend on whether the event in question was 'today' or another day:
Lo he visto hace 2 minutos.
I saw him two minutes ago.
Are they both correct? It they are, that tells me that when using "Hace + length of time + que + El Indefinido", we could either of these?
Jim Kurczewski
Hola, I see most of the reflective verb examples are habitual sentences, such as "todas las mananas", "todos los dias", 'siempre" etc. Is this usually how a reflective verb would be used? at least in the beginner's context? Gracias
When you say
"Notice that when we use this structure with tener, the participle agrees in gender and number with the object:"
aren't you really referring to using the structure with llevar?
Thanks
Hi,
I was wondering if there is a reason the "c" turns in a "j", It seems to me that
conduce would sound fine in front of "e" and "i" (perhaps just a change in front of the "a" and "o".
Do you know of any reason for the change?
Thank you.
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