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Spanish personal pronouns have distinct forms according to whether they stand for the subject or object, and third-person pronouns make an additional distinction for direct object or indirect object , and for reflexivity as well. Several pronouns also have special forms used after prepositions.
Personal pronouns in Spanish have distinct forms according to whether they stand for a subject , a direct object , an indirect object , or a reflexive object. Several pronouns further have special forms used after prepositions. Spanish is a pro-drop language with respect to subject pronouns.
A sentence in which the direct object is the topic or "theme" (old information), while the subject is part of the comment, or "rheme" (new information), often assumes OVS order. In this case the direct object noun phrase is supplemented with the appropriate direct object pronoun; for example: El libro lo escribió mi amigo
The appropriate direct object pronoun is placed between the direct object and the verb, and thus in the sentence La carne la come el perro ("The dog eats the meat") there is no confusion about which is the subject of the sentence (el perro). Clitic doubling is often necessary to modify clitic pronouns, whether accusative or dative.
Another unique aspect of Spanish is that personal pronouns have distinct feminine forms for the first and second person plural. For example, the Spanish pronouns nosotras and vosotras specifically refer to groups of females, distinguishing them from the masculine forms used for mixed-gender or male groups. [3]
A third-person pronoun is a pronoun that refers to an entity other than the speaker or listener. [1] Some languages, such as Slavic, with gender-specific pronouns have them as part of a grammatical gender system, a system of agreement where most or all nouns have a value for this grammatical category.
Many grammars of Spanish suggest that nouns ending in -a are feminine, [14] [15] but there is no requirement that Spanish nouns ending in -a be feminine. [10] Thus, grammars that pose such a requirement also typically include a long list of exceptions, such as el alerta 'alert', el bocata 'sandwich', el caza 'fighter plane', and many others.
Some Spanish-speaking people advocate for the use of the pronouns elle (singular) and elles (plural). [14] Spanish often uses -a and -o for gender agreement in adjectives corresponding with feminine and masculine nouns, respectively; in order to agree with a gender neutral or non-binary noun, it is suggested to use the suffix -e.