Running head: WORD ORDER IN SPANISH LANGUAGE 1

Word Order in Spanish

Name of Student

Institutional Affiliation
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Word Order in Spanish

As an overall rule, it is almost always right to follow the standard sentence structure of

subject-verb-object commonly abbreviated as VSO in linguistics. In Spanish, it is equally

common for object pronouns to emerge before verbs or attached to them provided the verb is a

command or an infinitive. Even though English allows variation predominantly for poetic effect

and questions, in Spanish, conventional statements often begin with the subject, the object, or the

verb. Starting a statement in Spanish is common in sentence constructions. The classification of

oral languages in relation to the leading word order of language descriptions and sentence

constituents have tended to focus on their elementary structure within the universal typological

consideration. Therefore, people tend to use the necessary SVO word order for both English and

Spanish, even though the latter does not have a more flexible organization in connection to the

structure. Topographical studies have drawn attention to the idea that some languages do not

organize essential elements of a sentence around the syntactic relation between verb and subject,

instead focus on grammaticalisation of the pragmatic roles of comment and topic. To that end,

this paper describes the word order in Spanish in consideration to the subject, possessor and

possessed noun phrases, verbs, and object among other linguistic elements.

As Jacob Terrell (2014) notes, the use of prescriptive and descriptive grammar in

secondary and primary educational settings are everyday because of the belief that some specific

utterances are appropriate. In Spanish, the prescriptive approach primarily focuses on putting

down the rules for usage and deter deterioration of language. The regulations provided serve to

set the correct sentence of Spanish language provided it is within the scope. Spanish-speaking

children in elementary school are taught word structures considered standard and fixed, even

though in real sense they consistently change. Prescriptively speaking, students might be taught
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the application of preposition such as por to denote a means of transport in Spanish. An example

of this application occurs in the following:

(a.) Llegué por tren.

“I arrived by train.”

Nonetheless, native Spanish speaker might correspondingly say,

(b.) Llegué en tren

“I arrived on a train, or I arrived by train.”

Arguably, both of these sentences are descriptively correct even if they are different in

variations of a similar utterance. As it occurs, the idea that language varieties exist is ignored in a

bid to promote the prescriptive notion that only a single form of Spanish is appropriate. In

Spanish, in fact, it is obligatory to use such patterns. Just as Terrell mentions, language

instruction in educational settings uses prescriptive grammar existing in textbooks because of the

belief that certain utterances are correct while others are incorrect, even if native speakers

employ “incorrect” variations.

The above few examples illustrate how the two schools of grammar remain at odds and

the cause for extensive controversy and confusion in grammar. In the first statement, consists of

split infinitive because the verb is an affix and the actual part of the word. Given that it is an

affix, it is not possible to separate it from the stem. Ideally, it would be like splitting the affix for

the third person singular marker in English. Furthermore, the rules of English language consider

it illogical for one statement to consist of two negatives. However, this rule does not exist in the

Spanish language. Terrell (2014) writes that prescriptive grammarians would label a sentence
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consisting of double negatives as incorrect in the reason that it violates the rule of using split as

an infinitive. However, in Spanish, double or sometimes triple negatives are used in Spanish

even though they English grammarians consider them improper. Double negative sentences in

Spanish usually translated in more than one way, such as “I arrived on a train and I arrived by

train.” In Spanish, therefore, negatives appear to reinforce as opposed to contradict each other as

in the case of English.

As a general rule, it is impossible to include both negative and affirmative terms in a

sentence, where one element of the sentence (object, verb, or subject) incorporates a negative

term while the other elements may use a negative term as necessary. In some instances, however,

it is correct to say the same thing in different ways, using either two or one negative. The

occurrence is because, in Spanish, the subject comes before or after a verb in cases where a

negative subject comes before the verb a no is not necessary with the verb. For example, a

statement like “ni siquiera no come pan” (he doesn't even eat bread) is not standard in Spanish

since there is a difference between using one or two negatives. Thus, when a verb is present with

a negative term, it is important to employ a negative term after the verb. For instance, "No tengo

amigos" (I do not have friends) is grammatically satisfactory since the negative term comes after

the verb.

From a topographical perspective, SVO order in Spanish is not necessarily the most

dominant order in transitive clauses. In most cases, subjects are not over and objects in case the

pronominal is characteristically clitics. Spanish grammar uses both subject and verb where the

former is the person or object performing an action of the verb that is always an action word

conjugated in an appropriate form to link up with the subject. According to Terrell (2014)

topology functions to categorize languages on the basis of shared characteristics in their

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grammars. Thus, topology offers to understand associated with the similarity and difference of

languages. Approximately eighty percent of languages in the world prefer SOV or SVO word

order. In Spanish, similar to English, the common word order is subject + verb + (rest of

sentence) as shown in the examples below

Structure: Subjects + verb + rest of sentence

In English, one would say Mark + works + in the garage

In Spanish, it would be Mark + trabaja + en la garaje

Nevertheless, the Spanish language is more flexible in terms of word order compared to

English in the above sentence when arranging in different ways even if their interpretation in

English would sound awkward. Using the same example of Mark and his work in the garage.

Mark trabaja en una garaje Subject + verb + rest of sentence

Trabaja Mark en una garaje Verb + subject + rest of sentence
Trabaja en una garaje Mark Verb + rest of sentence + subject
En una garaje trabaja Mark Rest of sentence + verb + subject
In English grammar, saying “Works Mark in a garage” or “In a garage works Mark”

does not sound grammatically appropriate. However, in Spanish, it is grammatically correct.

According to Terrell (2014), this flexibility is often tricky, particularly once they have the

adjectives, adverbs, along with other grammatical inputs.

The rule regarding placement of adjectives in Spanish holds that they come after the noun

rather than before them as in the case with English. The examples below illustrate the use of

adjective both in English and Spanish.

English Spanish

(adjective + noun) (noun + adjective)

The white shirt La camisa blanco
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A young boy el niño joven

The delicious meal la comida deliciosa

The rule holds appropriate for a number of adjectives, particularly descriptive adjectives

similar to the ones shown in the examples above. Nonetheless, there are some occasions when

the adjective comes ahead of the noun. Word order involving adjectives after the noun (noun +

adjective) is often crucial in describing qualities of a human being or thing. For example, saying

“el niño rubio” would mean “the blonde boy.” The act of putting adjectives ahead of the noun

(adjective + noun) helps when emphasizing appreciation or lack thereof of quality because it

adds additional emphasis. In such instances, adjectives that focus on the meaning of the noun

may be shown in the example below.

El horrible monstruo – the horrible monster

La oscura noche – the dark night

Moreover, Spanish grammar has a strong tendency for adpositions that show direction or

location in time to precede a noun in the language. In English, the term “proposition” describes

particles such as, on, at, or in phrases, for example, one would say on the table. In OV languages,

nonetheless, the adposition comes after the noun often referred to as postposition. The Spanish

language also has prepositions that function to connect either an adjective, a noun, or a verb to

the object of the proposition that is frequently a noun or pronoun (Delbecque& Lamiroy, 1996).

Mainly, prepositions in Spanish describe a relationship between distinct parts of a sentence and

usually refers to events like location, time, or movement. Spanish has simple prepositions with a

single word and compound prepositions that contain two or three words. The table below shows

some of the most common compound and simple prepositions along with instances of practice.
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a at, to Ellos viajaron a francia They travelled to France.

de From, of, about Ell es de UK She is from the UK
hacia to, towards Corrió hacia mí He ran towards me
debajo de beneath Debajo de la silla Beneath the chair
Fuera de Outside of Quiero viajar fuera de  Asia I want to travel outside Asia

In overall, Spanish language, similar to other SO languages has prepositions come after

the noun. However, when the verb emerges first alongside its complement, the placement of the

adverb instantly to the right of the verb infers a syntactic re-ordering analogous where adjective

splits the noun from its constituents. For example, a sentence like “Ganaron fácilmente a los

francia” would mean “They easily beat the French.” Here the sentence has a derivation that

includes movement of the head of the finite verb ganaron away from its immediate merge site

into a position to the left side of the adverb.

In addition to ordering words in sentences, it is also possible to categorize languages

based on their internal structure of words. Terrell (20140) pens that morphology represents the

study of breaking down of words to form meaningful language according to the analytic,

synthetic, and polysynthetic languages. The sequence guiding the acquisition of morphologic

structures often vary amongst languages dependent on the intricacy of linguistic construction.

For instance, Spanish-speaking learners often obtain reflective pronouns first unlike in English-

speaking children (Gutiérrez-Bravo, 2007). The Spanish language is often highly inflected

compared to English. In most instances, inflections are placed on verbs, nouns, pronouns, and

articles to affect the meaning of the words. Additionally, inflecting verbs in Spanish can depict

mood or any indicative action. Verbs are also possible to conjugate as regular, reflexive,

irregular, or orthographical changing. The Spanish language makes it difficult to separate

morphology from syntax since inflections often present a significant impact on the structure of
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syntax. Lahousse and Lamiroy (2012) describe syntax as the order of words in a sentence. Given

that Spanish depends heavily on morphology to convey a meaning, word order is often flexible.

When considering the Spanish language, it is significant to distinguish between variable

and invariable classes of the word. Variable words vary in relationship to number, tense, mode,

gender and include adjectives, nouns, pronouns, articles, and verbs. An example of variation in

Spanish verb would be:

First Person Variation

estudio (I study)- Person estudia (he or she studies)
estudio (I study)- Tense estudiaré (I will study)

Despite the differences between the Spanish language and others, the field of linguistic

typology has consistently shown that the languages will have some similarities. Terrell (2014)

writes about language universals and divides them into three categories, namely: absolute,

implicational, and tendencies universals. Absolute universals reference properties that are true to

all languages. Sometimes, every fact stands for each language in the world. For example, the

Spanish language has at least two vowels and nasal phones. Some universals in the Spanish

language occur without the need for reference to other property of different language.

References

Gutiérrez-Bravo, R. (2007). Prominence scales and unmarked word order in Spanish. Natural

Language and Linguistic Theory, 25, 2, 235-271.

Delbecque, N. & Lamiroy, B. (1996). Towards a typology of the Spanish dative. In : W. van

Belle & W. van Langendonck (eds.). Casus and Grammatical Relations across

Languages. The Dative, vol. I. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 73-117.

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Lahousse, K., & Lamiroy, B. (2012). Word order in French, Spanish and Italian: A

grammaticalization account. Folia Linguistica, 46, 2, 387-416.

Terrell, J. (2014). The shade of Andrea Fox: Being the 1st book of the endsong. A brief look at

grammar, pp. 26-32.

Zobl, H. (June 01, 1986). Word Order Typology, Lexical Government, and the Prediction of

Multiple, Graded Effects in L2 Word Order. Language Learning, 36, 2, 159-83.