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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, and, like many European languages, Spanish makes a T-V distinction in second person pronouns that has no equivalent in modern English. Object pronouns can be both clitic and non-clitic, with non-clitic forms carrying greater emphasis.
In this case the direct object noun phrase is supplemented with the appropriate direct object pronoun; for example: El libro lo escribió mi amigo; Because subject pronouns are often dropped, one will often see sentences with a verb and direct object but no explicitly stated subject. In questions, VSO is usual (though not obligatory):
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.
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]
In some languages the direct object pronoun and the indirect object pronoun have separate forms. For example, in the Spanish object pronoun system, direct object: Lo mandaron a la escuela (They sent him to school) and indirect object: Le mandaron una carta (They sent him a letter). Other languages divide object pronouns into a larger variety of ...
Area of leísmo and loísmo/laísmo in central Spain. Leísmo ("using le") is a dialectal variation in the Spanish language that occurs largely in Spain.It involves using the indirect object pronouns le and les in place of the (generally standard) direct object pronouns lo, la, los, and las, especially when the direct object refers to a male person or people.