Spanish prepositions

The prepositions of the Spanish language function exclusively as such, therefore, the language does not use postposition constructions. Most derive from Latin, excepting the Arabic-derived hasta (“until”); yet the list herein includes two archaic prepositions — so (“under”) and cabe (“beside”), and excludes vía (“by way of, via”) and pro (“in favour of”), two Latinisms recently integrated to the language. Pedagogically, Spanish language education imparts command of these words via mnemonic-device recitation of: a, ante, bajo, cabe, con, contra, de, desde, durante, en, entre, hacia, hasta, mediante, para, por, según, sin, so, sobre, and tras.

The Prepositions of the Spanish language

a

Look up a in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A generally denotes to and at; it has these notable usages:

Prepositional contraction: al (“to the”, “to”) is the contraction formed with a and el (“the”), the masculine definite article, yet the contraction is waived when the article is part of a title:

con

Look up con in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Con, derives from the Latin CVM (“with”), is an idiosyncratic preposition that combines with the personal pronouns mí, ti, and sí as the forms: conmigo (“with me”), contigo (“with you”), and consigo (“with her-, himself”). Linguistically, the denotation of the -go suffix originally was inherent to con, that is — in Latin, CVM was often placed after its pronoun, thus the MECVM, TECVM, SECVM, et cetera, usages. This popular Latin usage gave Spanish the migo, tigo, and sigo, and the nosco and vosco forms, their usages now lost; like-wise the denotations of the -go and -co suffixes, in the event, speakers redundantly prefixed con- to these words, hence this Spanish prepositional usage. (see: inflected preposition)

This syntactical reversion also occurs in the Italian language, wherein one can say con me, con te, and con sé, or, in the archaic style, meco, teco, and seco.

de

Look up de in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

De, derives from the Latin DE (“of" and "from"):

The preposition de is equivalent to the English apostrophe-“s” ( ’s) possessive construction; for example:

Prepositional contractions: When de is followed by the masculine definite article el (“the”), they form the contraction del (“of the”), however, de does not contract to del when followed by the homophonous personal pronoun él (“he”) or a proper noun, thus:

Prepositional typography: the upper-case form DE was configured as the siglum Đ — a typographic ligature adopted as a concise written and printed word-character, that originated as a lapidary scribal abbreviation.

Moreover, the preposition de is part of many compound prepositions, such as dentro de (“within”, “inside of”) and en contra de (“against . . .”); see section 2, below, for fuller description.

por and para

Por is a Latinate composite of PER and PRO, whereas para is a corruption (bastardisation) of por a; each is variously translated to English with, and as, permutations of "for", thus, to Anglophone learners of Spanish as a foreign language, determining the appropriate preposition might (initially) prove confusing. In the event, Cassell's Contemporary Spanish dictionary generally indicates that por denotes “cause” and “reason” (retrospective), while para denotes “purpose” and “destination” (prospective); the following are common usages of these prepositions:

por
para

In quotidian usage, the preposition para often is clipped to pa, as in the colloquial rustic usage: Amos p'alante. (“Let’s go forward.”), rather than the standard Vamos para adelante. (“Let us go forward.")

según

Según derives from the Latin SECVNDVM (“according to”), and, unlike the English preposition according, a verb can follow it without a qualifier such as “what” (que).

Popular speech uses it alone, replacing depende (“depends”):

A: Según. “It depends.”

Moreover, regional colloquial usage of the preposition según also expresses evidential mood, indicating hearsay or non-commitment (“supposedly”, “it is said”).

sin

Sin derives from the Latin SINE (“without”):

Combining the conjunction que to the preposition sin creates sin que (“without which”), a compound conjunction requiring the subjunctive mood:

Compound prepositions

Spanish replaces simple prepositions with compound prepositions, phrases such as: de acuerdo con (“according to”, “in accordance with”) in place of según; and en dirección a (“in the direction of”, “towards”) in place of hacia, akin to the English prepositional phrases: in front of, on top of, et cetera. Moreover, the concrete sobre (“upon”) is preferred to the ambiguous en (“on”, “in”); thus, Spanish expresses concepts, formally and informally, with compound- and simple- prepositions such as: después de (“after which”) rather than tras (“afterwards”), and para rather than con la finalidad de (“for the purpose of”, “to the purpose of”).

Spanish compound prepositions are composed of:

a por

In Spain, Spanish has the compound preposition a por meaning "in search of", used mainly with verbs of movement like ir and salir. This expression is not used outside Spain, and many speakers consider it to be incorrect, and prefer to replace it with por alone. According to the Real Academia Española, there is no normative reason to condemn the use of a por.[1] In some contexts, a por expresses a clearer meaning than por:

para con

There also exists the rare usage, para con (demeanour “towards”, “against”, “with”, “unto” someone or something):

Other Spanish compound prepositions are:

Translating English postpositions to Spanish

The English language features three types of adpositions — prepositions (preceding), postpositions (following), and circumpositions (enclosing) — allowing constructions such as “in the box”, “on the airplane”, and “out of Africa”, as in Spanish. But the postposition: “three years ago” is as impossible in Spanish usage as: “ago three years” is in English. Thus Spanish prepositions function exclusively as such; these examples express equivalent concepts using only prepositions:

References

  1. ↑ "En realidad, no hay razones para censurar el uso de a por", Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (2005), s.v. a2

External links

For a list of words relating to Spanish prepositions, see the Spanish prepositions category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.