|
Participles and Infinitives
In Spanish, verbs undergo a process
known as inflection. It involves adding endings to the stem of the
verb which indicate tense and person. Hence, only a conjugated verb
is ACTUALLY a verb, in the sense that it expresses the "action"
of an action at a point in time. One of the problems is that
English uses the term "gerund" in such a way that is extremely
misleading for learning Spanish. I will stipulate some more
specific terminology to help clarify th is in Spanish.
There are three forms of all verbs
(four in a few cases) which are described as uninflected because
they do not show person or tense, but rather show grammatical function,
transforming the verb into the equivalent of a noun (the infinitive),
adjective (past participle), adverb (progressive participle) and
in a few cases, an active adjective (present participle).
The past participles are easy to recognize.
Most end in -ed in English, but a number of irregulars exist. They
are the forms used to follow the auxilliary verbs "to be"
and "to have": have eaten, is seen, has been, am tired.
In these cases, an action has BEEN DONE TO the described object.
Present participles are similar, except
that they express a description of something that DOES an action.
They usually end in -ing. Isn't this fascinating?
Progressive participles, Infinitives
and Gerunds are easily confused. The following explanations should
assist you in understanding the differences.
In English, words that end in -ing
can be extremely misleading. In order to determine whether a word
that you wish to translate from English to Spanish is an infinitive,
present or progressive participle, you must run a little test. In
order to understand this test, let's take some time to discuss the
Three Uninflected Verb forms. Inflection refers to the process of
manipulating the ending of a verb to indicate person and tense.
In Spanish there are three forms which do not undergo such inflection.
They can be called "uninflected verb forms"
It is my opinion that the English term
"gerund" is confusing and should be disregarded. The gerund
is an alternate form in English for the infinitive in Spanish.
 |
Infinitives
[Fascinar--to eat, or the gerund,
"eating" as a noun/concept] |
|
Progressive
Participles [fascinando--fascinating as an ongoing action or
process (not very useful with this particular verb)] |
|
Past
Participles [fascinado--fascinated (describing
one who has been fascinated by something] |
|
Present
Participles [fascinante--fascinating (describing a thing which
fascinates)
not all verbs have this form. In all cases it is
possible to use this structure to carry this idea:
"algo que fascina"] |
Notice the difference between "interesado" and
"interesante":
|
Este
libro es interesante (active participle--the book does the "interesting") |
|
El
estudiante no está muy interesado en lo que dice el profe (past/passive
participle--the student is not being "interested"
by the professor.) |
|
Other
examples: fascinar--fascinante, fascinado oler--oliente,
olido
emocionante, emocionado (exciting, excited) |
Here is a set of rules and suggestions
that in combination should help to explain the usage of infinitives,
progressives and past participles.
Infinitives [ i.e.
Comer--
to eat] are verbs pretending to be or functioning
as NOUNS. For example: Smoking is bad = El fumar es malo. I like
reading. = Me gusta leer. Notice that you can ask the questions:
"What is bad?" and get "smoking" and "What
do you like?" and get "reading". The verb is
functioning as a noun. It is the idea of the action.
Infinitives can also
function as true infinitives when accompanied by auxiliary verbs:
|
Quiero
estudiar. |
|
Voy
a estudiar. |
|
Me
gusta estudiar. |
|
Puedo
estudiar, y recibir una buena nota en la clase. |
Note: Progressive participles are
also known as present participles, and sometimes "gerund."
In my opinion, these names create confusion, so I do not use them.
Progressive
Participles [i.e.
comiendo] are verbs functioning as ADVERBS (which modify verbs and
adjectives, but in this case, only verbs).
For example: By studying you will get good grades. = Estudiando, se reciben buenas notas.
He came in singing. = El entró cantando. Notice that you can ask the question
"How do you get good grades?" and the answer is "By
studying" and "How did he come in?" "Singing."
Progressives
can also function as true progressives, as in the following structures:
I am playing. =
Estoy jugando.
Things are getting worse. = Las cosas van haciéndose peores. Keep
studying. =
Sigue estudiando.
[other verbs are possible with progressives such as ESTAR, IR, SEGUIR,
CONTINUAR, but NEVER
SER!]
Past
Participles [ i.e.
comido--eaten]
are verbs pretending to be adjectives.
For example: With the resultant state structure of Estar with a past participle and the
passive voice structure of SER you can see that the past partiple, which is the
predicate (descriptive characteristic) of the subject, changes to
show gender and number, just as does any adjective:
|
The cookies are made by Juanita every day, and
they are eaten by the children. This morning the cookies were
eaten right away, and now they are all eaten. [none are left]
|
|
Las galletas son hechas por Juanita todos los días, y son comidas por los niños. Esta mañana las galletas fueron comidas de una vez, y ahora están comidas. |
Past Participles can be used as true
past partiples with the helping verb HABER to form the compound
or perfect tenses. When this is the case, they do not reflect gender
and number because they are not actually functioning as adjectives.
For example: I have seen it. = Lo he visto.
I hadn't been there before. = No había estado
allí antes. Notice that these always end in [O]
Present Participles
or "Active Adjectives"
The Present Participle is not a consistent
form, in the sense that not all verbs have a specific form that
does this. They may instead be expressed by a more explicit
verbal structure. i.e. "a smoking dog." is
"un perro que fuma." The standard form for the present
partciple is an ending of -ante or -iente, but not always.
With smoking, the form that expresses a "person or machine
that does something" is the one used for this sentence in Spanish.
"Un perro fumador." There is no form "fumante".
It would be perfectly acceptable to use "Un perro que fuma."
Another good example is the pair "fascinating" and "interesting."
He is interesting. El
es interesante. (He does the action)
He is fascinated with beetles.
El está fascinado con los escarabajos. The
beetles do the action to him. The emphasis is on the adjective.
You can also avoid the participle by
using an active voice verb structure: Los
escarabajos le fascinan. The emphasis is on the verb.
You can also combine
the uninflected verb forms as follows:
|
I
have been studying Spanish for two years.= He estado estudiando
el español por dos años. BUT, the Spanish prefer this simpler
stucture: Hace dos años que estudio el español. |
|
In
the past, this is more likely: I had to have been reading for
an hour before he arrived. = Tuve que haber estado leyendo por
una hora antes de que volviera. |
|
Siempre
he querido ir a España. |
|
Vas
a querer hacerlo también. |
Copyright © Darren Witwer of Minneapolis
Community and Technical College.
Spanish Department, All rights reserved.
|
