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CONTRASTING SPANISH
SYNTAX TO ENGLISH
LANGUAGE

Expository Paper

SUBMITTED TO:
Ms. Eureyleen Casido
SUBMITTED BY:
Madayag, Kent Jervic
Ang-og, Jamil
Bacanto, Mcjo
Abinasa, John Daniel
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INTRODUCTION

Languageis implicated in daily lives, and there are a large and open-ended number of

activities (Cook,2003), which involves language theories (Alkhaldi, 2011) wherein our

languages spoken are influenced by the culture and traditions in the societies we belongwhich

differs from recitation and use. As the Philosopher Plato said in his theory of language

acquisitionthat all human beings are born with innate knowledge (a priori knowledge).

Hebelieves that other knowledge, including language, was innate. This was why most people

can talk early on in life. Even though it is only a theory, but we can figure it out that every

human possesses unique talents and abilities. We have our own distinctive capabilities and

potentialities to learn different languages.

There are times when we talk about various languages is sound confusing and

difficult to understand sometimes. Spanish is one of the most spoken languagesacross the

globe and English is the universal language. Have you ever wondered, and willing to

investigate about the constructions of Spanish languages and to determine how it differs from

English language? If you still have not noticed them, just continue reading to make it more

interesting.Spanish and English are two of the more important languages in the history of

Europe. They both have long, and complicated histories and the languages did not just appear

out of nowhere but evolved from the meeting of numerous ancient dialects throughout the

ages.

The main purpose of this paper is to present expository research about Contrasting

Spanish Syntax to English Languages. Specifically, the types of sentence construction in

Spanish.It is to determine how do Spanish languages is different from English languages and

how do English languages have similarities to Spanish languages. In this paper, we gathered

information from different resourcing sites to support and validate our paper. We presented

examples and followed by explanations as body of the research and ended by a conclusion.
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This paper will discuss the word pattern for basic Spanish sentences. The sentences

have different elements, such as pronouns, subjects, and verbs, please refer to the following

key to be as your guide:

EXAMPLE1.

The example number 1 shows the first type of Spanishsentence constructions which is

the one-verb sentence construction, and it is using the Subject-Verb-Object (SVO)

pattern. In the first column is the English sentence construction while in the second column is

the Spanish constructions. We can see both English and Spanishfollows the same

pattern(SVO). From the example above, inpositivesentencein English: “Maria reads the

books.”Maria is the Subject (S) followed by readswhich is the Verb (V) and Object (O)the

books. This pattern is similartoSpanish: Mariais the Subject (S) followed by lee which is the

Verb (V) and Object (O) los libros.While innegative types of sentences,theSVO pattern are

still being use. The structure will become different whena negation (n) is necessary,

thenegative is placed before the verb. From the example above, the negationis present in both
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sentences but anotherdifferencesin English structure they are adding auxiliary which is the

word “does” while in Spanish does not have auxiliary instead, they are using article “El” or

“the.”

For instance, there are cases in Spanish sentence construction, the subject is implied

by the verb conjugation, the subject and the verb are combined together. As you can see on

the table below.

EXAMPLE2.

The example number 2 shows the second type of Spanish sentence constructions

which is the two-verb sentence construction, and it is using the Subject-Verb-Infinitive

form of Verb-Object (SVIO) pattern. In this type of construction two verbs are needed to

express an action. In English, for instance, the first verb is conjugated to agree with the

subject, and the second verb is left in its infinitive form (I); that is, the verb will remain in its

“to” + verb form. For example, “to eat” is the infinitive verb that is conjugated to agree with
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the person who eats, i.e. I eat, you eat, she eats, etc. The same rule of syntax applies to

Spanish. When using two verbs, the first verb will be conjugated to match the subject, and the

second verb will remain in the infinitive. In addition, the negation will continue to be placed

before the first verb.

In this example, two-verbs are attached to the sentence. The first verb is conjugated to

agree with the subject and the second verb is the infinitive form of verb. From the example

above the construction of the sentence in both English and Spanish language are using SVIO

pattern. In positive type of sentence for example, in English“Ineed to shop for jeans” and in

Spanish “NecesetoComprar para los jeans” as what we have observe, the first verb which is

the word “need” is conjugated to agree with the subject “I.” To express the action of the first

verb, we need to have the second verb which is the infinitive form of verb to complete the

thought of a sentence and that is “To shop.”

In negative types of sentences,changes of the constructions are both in English and

Spanish language, in the example above, in English“They are not able to see the stars.”

They are still follows the SVIO pattern. There is an auxiliary,negation and the infinitive form

of the verb added in the sentence. But in this case, in Spanish “Ellos no pueden ver las

estrellas.” the auxiliary wasremoved but still the negation is place before the verb and the

infinitive form of the verb which is “to see” is place after the first verb which is “able.” In

this case the verb is not conjugated with the subject because in this sentence, the negation is

place between the subject and the first verb.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, we concluded that Spanish and English languages have similarities when it

comes to construction of sentences. They are both using the same pattern which is the

SVO(Subject-Verb-Object). We find out in Spanish syntax, there are using 2 types of

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constructions which are the 1-verb sentence and 2-verb sentence.1 verb sentence it only

consist of 1 verb in a sentence. Also, the Spanish sentence construction isvery similar to

English word order, as English also follows SVO pattern. In a positive type of sentence the

English and Spanish language both using SVO pattern and they differ in the negative type of

sentence. In English still using the SVO pattern with the negation and the auxiliary is added

in the sentence while the negative types of sentence in Spanish the auxiliary is remove and till

using the SVO pattern with the negation place before the verb.

For instance, there are cases that in Spanish construction of sentence the verb is

conjugated to agree with the subject and they are combined together.

In addition, Two-verb construction needs two verbs to express an action. In English,

for instance, the first verb is conjugated to agree with the subject, and the second verb is left

in its infinitive form (I); that is, the verb will remain in its “to” + verb form. We find out that

in the positive types of sentence, the construction of Spanish sentence the verb is agree to the

subject and using the SVIO pattern which is Subject-Verb-Infinitive form of the verb-

Object.But, there are cases like in negative types of sentencefor example, there are changes

happened butstill they are using SVIO pattern but we can observed in Spanish construction

that the verb and the subject is not conjugated because there is negation that is placed

between the subject and the verb while in English there is auxiliary added in the sentence.
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REFERENCES

Batchelor, R., & San José, M. (2010). A Reference Grammar of Spanish (Reference
Grammars). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511845604

Domínguez, L. (2004). The Effects of Phonological Cues on the Syntax of Focus

Constructions in Spanish. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2002 (p. 69). John
Benjamins

Groos, A., & Bok-Bennema, R. (1986). The structure of the sentence in Spanish. Generative
studies in Spanish syntax, 27, 67-80

Ortiz-Lira, H. (1994). A contrastive analysis of English and Spanish sentence accentuation.

The University of Manchester (United Kingdom)

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content/uploads/tutoring/handouts/A-Quick-Guide-to-Spanish Syntax.pdf

https://autolingual.com/which-language-is-older-spanish-or-english/

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