Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Spanish language
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
== Grammar == {{Main|Spanish grammar}} [[File:Cervantes Jáuregui.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Miguel de Cervantes]], considered by many the greatest author of Spanish literature, and author of ''[[Don Quixote]]'', widely considered the first modern European novel]] Most of the grammatical and [[Linguistic typology|typological]] features of Spanish are shared with the other [[Romance languages]]. Spanish is a [[fusional language]]. The [[Spanish nouns|noun]] and [[Spanish adjectives|adjective]] systems exhibit two [[Grammatical gender|genders]] and two [[Grammatical number|numbers]]. In addition, articles and some [[Spanish pronouns|pronouns]] and [[Spanish determiners|determiners]] have a neuter gender in their singular form. There are about fifty [[Grammatical conjugation|conjugated]] forms per [[verb]], with 3 tenses: past, present, future; 2 [[Grammatical aspect|aspects]] for past: [[Perfective aspect|perfective]], [[Imperfective aspect|imperfective]]; 4 [[Grammatical mood|moods]]: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative; 3 persons: first, second, third; 2 numbers: singular, plural; 3 [[verboid]] forms: infinitive, gerund, and past participle. The indicative mood is the [[Markedness|unmarked]] one, while the subjunctive mood [[Subjunctive mood in Spanish|expresses uncertainty or indetermination]], and is commonly paired with the conditional, which is a mood used to express "would" (as in, "I would eat if I had food"); the imperative is a mood to express a command, commonly a one word phrase – "¡Di!" ("Talk!"). Verbs express [[T–V distinction]] by using different persons for formal and informal addresses. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see [[Spanish verbs]] and [[Spanish irregular verbs]].) Spanish [[syntax]] is considered [[Branching (linguistics)|right-branching]], meaning that subordinate or [[Grammatical modifier|modifying]] [[Constituent (linguistics)|constituents]] tend to be placed after head words. The language uses [[Preposition and postposition|prepositions]] (rather than postpositions or inflection of nouns for [[Grammatical case|case]]), and usually—though not always—places [[adjective]]s after [[noun]]s, as do most other Romance languages. Spanish is classified as a [[subject–verb–object]] language; however, as in most Romance languages, constituent order is highly variable and governed mainly by [[topicalization]] and [[Focus (linguistics)|focus]]. It is a "[[Pro-drop language|pro-drop]]", or "[[Null-subject language|null-subject]]" language—that is, it allows the deletion of subject pronouns when they are [[Pragmatics|pragmatically]] unnecessary. Spanish is described as a "[[Verb framing|verb-framed]]" language, meaning that the ''direction'' of motion is expressed in the verb while the ''mode'' of locomotion is expressed adverbially (e.g. ''subir corriendo'' or ''salir volando''; the respective English equivalents of these examples—'to run up' and 'to fly out'—show that English is, by contrast, "satellite-framed", with mode of locomotion expressed in the verb and direction in an adverbial modifier).
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)