Spanish Grammar: Vocatives, Sentential Complements, and Reflexive Structures

1. Special Complements

Vocative

The vocative is a supplement that is not part of the sentence and is often difficult to identify. Key features include:

• It is not a complement of the subject nor the predicate.
• It is isolated from the rest of the sentence.
• It is usually a personal name.
• It is often confused with the subject of the sentence.

Sentential Complement

This affects the whole sentence and can function as sentential adverbs, adverbial phrases, or prepositional phrases. These supplements introduce different meanings:

• Modalized: Adverbs and adverbial phrases indicating the attitude of the speaker toward the content of the sentence.
• Evaluative: Adverbs or prepositional phrases that introduce the speaker's rating of the sentence content.
• Delimiters: Adverbs or prepositional phrases that introduce qualifications or limitations affecting the validity of the statement.

2. Reflexive Passive and Impersonal Reflexive

Differentiating Reflexive Structures

• Reflexive Passive: Formed with the pronoun se preceding a verb in the 3rd person singular or plural. This construction only occurs with transitive verbs.
• Impersonal Reflexive: These lack a subject. The verb is always in the 3rd person singular. This construction can occur with intransitive, copular, or transitive verbs that have a direct object preceded by the preposition a.

Confusion between reflexive passive and impersonal reflexive only occurs with transitive verbs, as they are the only ones that can generate both types of sentences.

Modalities of Sentences

• Enunciative: Provide information about a fact (positive or negative).
• Interrogative: Formulate a question.
  • Total: Answered with yes/no; uses ascending intonation.
  • Partial: Built with interrogative pronouns or adverbs; uses descending intonation.
• Exhortative: Express orders or requests.
• Exclamatory: Demonstrate the subjectivity of the speaker.
• Dubitative: Express doubt about a fact or possibility.
• Desiderative: Express a wish.