THE PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
1. Inventory of Prepositions
The
modern inventory of Spanish prepositions is normally taken to be as follows:
|
a
‘to’ |
de
‘of’ |
hasta
‘until’ |
tras
‘after’ |
|
ante
‘before’ |
desde
‘since’ |
para
‘for’ |
|
|
bajo
‘under’ |
en ‘on/in’ |
por ‘on account of’ |
|
|
con ‘with’ |
entre ‘between’ |
sin ‘without’ |
|
|
contra ‘against’ |
hacia ‘towards’ |
sobre ‘on/above’ |
|
To
the above list we might add the following items: durante ‘during/for’, mediante ‘by means of’ and según ‘according to’.
De is particularly productive, as it combines with other items
to produce what are sometimes called prepositional
locutions, of which the most common are the following:
además ‘in addition’ + de Þ además de ‘in addition to’
antes ‘before’ + de Þ antes de ‘before’
debajo ‘underneath’ + de Þ debajo de ‘under’
después ‘after’ + de Þ después de ‘after’
detrás ‘behind’ + de Þ detrás de ‘behind’
encima ‘on top’ + de Þ encima de ‘on’
2.
De-Phrases
Even on its own, however, de is extremely versatile. Most
obviously, it is used to indicate possession, as in the NP el libro
De-phrases are also frequent as attribute-denoting modifiers,
as in una escuela de música ‘a music school’, una mesa de caoba ‘a mahogany table’ etc. In this type of
construction de generally takes a
bare NP, as the presence of a determiner implies a different (often possessive)
semantic relationship between the NP complement of de and the noun the de-phrase modifies. Contrast, for example,
ropa de bebé ‘baby clothes’ with ropa
With nouns that are
lexically derived from or semantically related to a verb, the preposition de serves as a link with a complement NP
that would be the direct object in the corresponding verbal construction; e.g. la pérdida de la llaves ‘the loss
of the keys’ (compare Perdieron [DO las llaves]), la venta de la casa ‘the sale of
the house’ (compare Vendieron [DO la casa]). In
contrast, a nominal construction involving a noun related to a verb that takes
a prepositional complement usually reproduces the preposition used in the
verbal construction; e.g. su insistencia en
ello ‘his/her insistence on it’ (compare Insiste [PP en ello]).
Finally, de can be used to link two NPs that
stand in a relation of apposition to one another; i.e. when the second constituent
both elucidates and is co-referential with the first constituent. Thus the NPs el tonto and el niño can
be viewed as being in apposition in el
tonto del niño ‘the stupid boy’ (i.e. the containing NP can be paraphrased
as el tonto, es decir el niño…) and de is basically an empty linking
element. A similar analysis could be extended to such cases as el hecho de su muerte ‘the fact of
his/her death’, in which the NP su muerte
can be seen as a co-referential elucidation of the NP el hecho (thus: el hecho, es
decir su muerte…), with de as a
dummy linking device.
3.
Prepositional Direct Objects
Spanish differs from
languages such as French and English in that some direct object NPs are introduced
by a preposition, viz. a. The paradigm case in which direct
object-marking a is
used is before an animate NP, particularly a human NP:
(1) Esperan a [DO alguien]. (Not *Esperan
alguien.)
‘They are waiting for
someone.’
(2) No conocemos a [DO nadie]. (Not *No conocemos nadie)
‘We don’t know anybody.’
(3) ¿Has visto a [DO tu padre]? (Not *¿Has visto tu
padre?)
‘Have you seen your
father?’
Note, however, that a can be omitted when an indefinite NP
has non-specific reference (i.e. when it refers to any individual of the appropriate kind). Consider the following examples:
(4) Lucas busca una secretaria.
‘Lucas is looking for a secretary.’
(5) Lucas busca a una secretaria.
‘Lucas is looking for a
secretary.’
The NP una secretaria has to be non-specific in (4) – i.e. Lucas is merely
‘after a secretary’ – while in (5) it could be either non-specific or
specific (in the latter case, there would have to be some particular secretary
that Lucas was trying to find). A corollary of this circumstance is the fact
that the indefinite article una can
be deleted from its containing NP in (4) but not in sentence (5). In other
words,
(6) Lucas busca secretaria.
‘Lucas is looking for a secretary.’
but not
(7) *Lucas busca a
secretaria.
Conversely, a is sometimes used with an inanimate NP, often because the NP
is in some way personified, the classic cases being with country names and abstract
nouns:
(8) Nuestro equipo
venció a España.
‘Our team beat
(9) La ambición
favorece a la codicia.
‘Ambition favours greed.’
Sentence (8) can be usefully
contrasted with (10) below, in which the name España refers to the setting for an activity, rather than to a
participant in an action:
(10) Nuestro equipo recorrió España.
‘Our team made a tour of
In some instances the use
of a with an inanimate direct object
is syntactically motivated, cases in point being when the direct object is
separated from its verb by an NP functioning as a secondary predicate,
as in (11), and when a subject NP is placed after the verb (the use of a in this case is presumably designed to
avoid the wrong NP being treated as the subject), as in (12)
(11) Llamaban Banda Oriental al territorio que quedaba
al oriente del río Uruguay.
‘They called the territory
to the east of the river
(12) Atravesó a [DO la procesión] [SUBJ un camión].
‘A lorry crossed the
procession.’
Direct object-marking a is not
restricted to verbal objects, since some nouns that are lexically related to
transitive verbs subcategorize PPs that are introduced by a:
(13) su
odio/amor/temor a su padre
‘his hatred/love/fear of
his father’
Interestingly, when the
‘direct object’ NP (su padre, in the
above example) is inanimate, the use of a
is still a possibility, despite the fact that it would not normally be used in
the corresponding verbal construction; thus su
odio a la guerra ‘his hatred of the war’, despite the fact that the
corresponding verb would be unlikely to take a direct object NP preceded by a:
(14) Él odia la
guerra. (Not ?Él odia a la guerra.)
‘He hates war.’