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Several pronouns further have special forms used after prepositions. Spanish is a pro-drop language with respect to subject pronouns. Like French and other languages with the T–V distinction, Spanish has a distinction in its second person pronouns that has no equivalent in modern English. Object pronouns come in two forms: clitic and non ...
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
All non-clitic indirect objects as well as the majority of personal non-clitic direct objects must be preceded by the preposition a, and an appropriate dative clitic pronoun is thus often used to distinguish between the two. With indirect objects that come before the verb, clitic doubling is mandatory in the active voice: [5]
Spanish is one well-known example of a clitic-doubling language, having clitic doubling for both direct and indirect objects. Because standard Spanish grammatical structure does not draw a clear distinction between an indirect object and a direct object referring to a person or another animate entity (see Spanish prepositions), it is common but not compulsory to use clitic doubling to clarify.
Like French and other languages with the T-V distinction, modern Spanish has a distinction in its second-person pronouns that has no equivalent in modern English. The most basic is the difference between tú ( vos in areas with voseo ) and usted : tú or vos is the "familiar" form, and usted , derived from the third-person form "your grace ...
The pronouns yo, tú, vos, [1] él, nosotros, vosotros [2] and ellos are used to symbolise the three persons and two numbers. Note, however, that Spanish is a pro-drop language, and so it is the norm to omit subject pronouns when not needed for contrast or emphasis. The subject, if specified, can easily be something other than these pronouns.
In Portuguese, third-person clitic pronouns have special variants used after certain types of verb endings, which does not happen in Spanish. The default object pronouns o/a/os/as change to lo/la/los/las when they follow a verb that ends in r , s or z , and to no/na/nos/nas when they follow a verb that ends in a nasal sound.
It's also combined with the relative pronouns que and cual to form relative clauses, such as lo que dices, lo cual es cierto, and can also be followed by de, e.g. lo de Juan está aquí, lo de que estoy enfermo no es cierto. Bello also notes that words such as nada, poco, algo, and mucho can be used as neuters in some contexts.