Overview
This lecture covers pronouns and their syntactic functions in Spanish, focusing on the roles of direct and indirect objects and the rules for their pronoun forms and placement.
Syntactic Functions in Sentences
- Words in sentences have different syntactic functions, such as subject, direct object, and indirect object.
- The meaning of a sentence depends on the syntactic function of each word, not just the words themselves.
Direct Objects
- The direct object is the noun or pronoun that receives the action of the verb directly.
- It answers the questions "what?" or "whom?" in relation to the verb.
- Examples: In "Ana has a dog," "a dog" is the direct object; In "I read novels," "novels" is the direct object.
- Spanish direct object pronouns are: me, te, lo/la, nos, os, los/las; only third-person forms (lo/la/los/las) show gender.
- Third-person direct object can be a noun or a pronoun.
- With one conjugated verb, the direct object pronoun comes before the verb.
- With an infinitive, the pronoun can go before the conjugated verb or attached to the infinitive.
- With commands, the pronoun attaches to the verb and an accent is added to maintain the original stress.
Indirect Objects
- The indirect object shows to or for whom the verb's action is intended.
- It answers the question "to/for whom?" regarding the action.
- Examples: In "Ana gave a book to Julián," "to Julián" is the indirect object; In "Paloma bought me dinner," "me" is the indirect object.
- Spanish indirect object pronouns are: me, te, le, nos, os, les; these do not show gender.
Pronoun Placement and Combination
- If both direct and indirect object pronouns are present, both come before the verb, with the indirect object pronoun first.
- When le/les (indirect object) stands before lo/la/los/las (direct object), le/les changes to "se."
- When attaching two pronouns to a verb, add an accent to the root to preserve original word stress.
Key Terms & Definitions
- Syntactic function — the grammatical role of a word in a sentence (e.g., subject, object).
- Direct object — the noun/pronoun directly affected by the verb’s action.
- Indirect object — the noun/pronoun indicating to/for whom the action is done.
- Pronoun — a word that replaces a noun (e.g., "me," "it").
Action Items / Next Steps
- Review examples of direct and indirect object pronouns in Spanish.
- Practice transforming sentences by replacing nouns with appropriate pronouns and note their correct placement.