Spanish Grammar: Noun Gender, Verbs, and Deixis

Gender of Nouns

Unmotivated nouns are those that do not refer to sexual diversity. Motivated nouns show sexual diversity and can be categorized as follows:

• Common gender: These present the same form for masculine and feminine, distinguished by alternating the article or other adjacent elements.
• Epicene gender: Alternation procedures are performed by adding lexical markers such as male/female (masculine/feminine).
• Change of signifier: A substantive which is formed by changing the female part of the male signifier.
• Heteronymy: Substantive heteronyms are those in which the male and female forms are different words.

Ambiguous and Homonymous Nouns

Ambiguous nouns are unmotivated nouns in which both masculine and feminine genders are accepted by the Royal Academy; their use depends on stylistic or dialectal reasons. Homonymy occurs when there is a group of nouns whose gender alternation produces a significant change in meaning.

Verbal Inflection

The structure of verbal inflection is: Lexeme + thematic vowel + markers of tense, aspect, and mood + markers of number and person.

• Present: These modalities often have tense, aspect, and mood markers.
• Preterite Imperfect: The first and third person singular have no specific form for number and person.
• Preterite Perfect Simple: Example: cant-é-void.
• Preterite Imperfect Indicative (2nd and 3rd conjugation): The first and third person do not have aspect-mode markers (e.g., tem-ía-void).
• Conditional Imperfect: Example: cant-a-ría-void.
• Subjunctive Present (-e, -a): Example: cant-e-void.
• Preterite Imperfect Subjunctive (-ra, -se): Example: cant-a-ra-void.
• Future Imperfect (-re): Example: cant-a-re-void.

Values of the Pronoun "Se"

• Reflexive: The subject performs the verb action on itself.
• Reciprocal: The subjects of the sentence perform the action of each verb on one another.
• Variant of "le": The pronoun can be an equivalent of the pronoun le.
• Passive reflex: The verb is in the active voice and the pronoun se is used (e.g., se firmó / was signed).
• Mark of impersonality: There is a group of impersonal sentences where the pronoun se marks this feature.
• Pronominal: There are certain verbs where adding the pronoun se changes the verb's meaning (e.g., agree/acordar, remember/acordarse).

Deixis and Textual Reference

Deixis is the property that some elements of the language (deictics) have to identify or refer to elements that are both inside and outside the text:

• Exophoric: Refers to items that are outside the text.
• Endophoric: Refers to items that are within the text.
  • Anaphora: The deictic points to an item that appears before it in the speech.
  • Cataphora: The deictic points to an element that appears after it in the speech.