Spanish determiners

The Spanish language uses determiners in a similar way to English. The main difference is that they agree with the noun that they modify in terms of both number (singular/plural) and gender (masculine/feminine).

Demonstrative determiners

The Spanish has three kinds of demonstrative, whose use typically depends on the distance (physical or metaphorical) between the speaker and the described entity, or sometimes it depends on the proximity to the 3 grammatical persons.

Demonstratives Near Middle Far
Masculine singular este ese aquel
Masculine plural estos esos aquellos
Feminine singular esta esa aquella
Feminine plural estas esas aquellas

English also used to have a three-way system: "this hill (here)", "that hill (there)" or "yon hill (yonder)" in Spanish, "esta colina", "esa colina", "aquella colina". Standard English lost the third level, so that the "that, there" series covers the ground of "yon, yonder".

Este usually refers to something near the speaker (the first person). Ese usually refers to something nearer the listener (the second person). Aquel usually refers to something away from both the speaker and the listener.

The demonstrative determiners can also be used as pronouns, with the addition of the neutral singular forms esto, eso, aquello.

A similar three-way system of demonstratives is found in Portuguese, as well as in Slavic languages, Japanese and Turkish.

Articles

Definite article

The definite article in Spanish, corresponding to "the", is el. It inflects for gender and number as follows:

The usually masculine form el is used instead of la before feminine nouns that begin with a stressed a sound:

La is used, however, when el would imply a masculine noun:

El is never used, however, before feminine adjectives that begin with a stressed a:

Azúcar is a very special case. Its a- is unstressed, and yet it usually takes el even when feminine; in addition, azúcar can be of both genders in Spanish (other words with double gender are sal (salt), mar (sea) and sartén (frying pan)):

Feminine el does not have the same origin as the masculine el. The latter is from the Old Castilian ele, whereas the former is from ela, just as la is.

There is also a "neuter article" that is used before adjectives and makes them work like nouns:

Indefinite article

Near synonyms of unos include unos cuantos, algunos and unos pocos.

The same rules that apply to the use of feminine el apply to una and un:

As in English, the plural indefinite article is not always required:

Possessive determiners

These are often known as possessive or genitive determiners. They are used before the noun they possess (and before the rest of the whole noun phrase, for example when an adjective precedes the noun). They agree in number with the noun, and some of them in gender, too.

Note the following:

Dialectal variation:

Combining demonstratives and possessives

Demonstrative pronouns can be combined with possessives as follows:

Strictly speaking, the presence of the first determiner means that the possessive must be interpreted as an adjective rather than a determiner. Note however that the long adjectival form (mío, tuyo, suyo, etc.), which is identical to the corresponding possessive pronoun, is not used in this construction, which is rather uncommon.

It is also possible to use the long adjectival form. In this case, it goes after the noun:

Miscellaneous determiners

There are many more words that can be used as determiners in Spanish. They mostly end in -o and have the usual four forms (-o, -a, -os, -as) to agree with their noun.

External links

For a list of words relating to Spanish determiners, see the Spanish determiners category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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