Spanish Object Pronouns II

Okay, so now we can get down to the business of identifying the functions of the direct and the indirect object. As you know, for these types of matters I love to use my own personal brand of logic, which is based on what seems logical to me, the simple logic of the common folks that doesn’t ever need all the more or less “official” jargon related to grammar.

The Direct Object in Spanish

So first thing’s first – why does the direct object contain the word direct? Because it has a direct relationship with the verb. In other words it includes necessary information, which if taken out would leave the verb looking kind of “naked”.  

For example: If I run in to my friend Luisma and I ask “¿que haces?” and he responds “estoy comprando”, the next thing to come out of my mouth in all likelihood will be “vale, estás comprando, pero ¿comprando que?”, because I need information that directly complements the verb. This important information, without which we wouldn’t be able to continue having normal speech, needs a pronoun that can substitute it, and that pronoun has to be as specific as possible given the importance of the information. That’s why, in the third person, the pronoun reflects the object in terms of gender and whether it is plural or singular.

The indirect object is often introduced by the prepositions “A” or “PARA”. This is where we’re faced with a big issue that we’re going to try to clear up with another example:

Esta mañana he regalado a mi hermana un libro de cocina.
Esta mañana he visto a mi hermana.

These sentences contain identical references, which are underlined, but what’s notable here is that while the underlined component in the first line may be eliminated without changing the main idea of the sentence, (esta mañana he regalado un libro de cocina), in the second line it is fundamental information that may not be eliminated without producing a serious lack of information (this morning I bought…). So relating the function of the direct object, or the direct complement, or the accusative (call it however you want) is NOT related to whether or not the “A” appears in a sentence. We also know that in Spanish, when the direct object is a person, or a personified thing, the “A” must be used.

The Indirect Object in Spanish

The indirect object on the other hand (or the indirect complement, or the dativo) often refers to a person whose presence is important in the sentence but is not essential, as removing that person from the sentence would not break up the continuum of information the way it does when removing the direct object from the sentence. So the indirect object transmits information that is relevant but not fundamental, which seems clear by the fact that the pronoun used for it does NOT offer specific information like the pronoun used for the direct object does. That’s why the indirect object in the third person does not mark any difference to show the gender of the object it is replacing, only whether the object is plural or singular.

In conclusion, I do the following exercise with my students. I write a sentence on the board like:

“Ayer Ana María compró un ramo de flores para su novia porque era su cumpleaños”

We can identify different units of information here which, like a miniature solar system, revolve around the nucleus of the sentence: THE VERB.

1. Ayer
2. Ana María
3. Un ramo de flores
4. Para su novia
5. Porque era su cumpleaños.

Now we establish a few “key words” that will help us identify certain functions.

(Clearly these questions are very generic, but they’re a first step toward getting our students to grasp, in generic terms, the grammatical functions involved, and that’s the main idea of what we’re trying to do here isn’t it?

I’ll let you think a bit about that and next week we’ll conclude this discussion and get into using direct and indirect pronouns with the verb (in all possible combinations).

See you next week!