Spanish: An Essential Grammar

When the preposition aindicates movement, direction or destination,

usually only the prepositional object pronoun is used (notin addition to a

weak pronoun):

Vino a mí corriendo. She ran up to me.

Se dirigió a mí. He addressed me.

Nos acercamos a ellas. We approached them.

Note: When some verbs are used reflexively (e.g. acercarse‘to approach’), and

particularly when they are used in the3rd person, they are found either with a+

prepositional object pronoun, or with an indirect object pronoun. Compare El chico

se acercó a mí with El chico se me acercó, both meaning ‘The boy approached me’.

A sentence using the 1st person plural, such as Nos le acercamos‘We approached

him’ would generally be considered colloquial or [LA].

The sequencea+ prepositional object pronoun may occur in isolation as

the response to a question:

• ¿A quién tengo que – Who do I have to give
  entregar los documentos? the documents to?


• A mí. – ‘To me’.


• ¿A quién quieren ver? – Who do they want to see?


• A ustedes. – ‘You’.

Reflexive pronouns

Reflexive pronouns are required when the pronoun refers back to the sub-

ject of the sentence, as in ‘The cat was washing itself’. English reflexive pro-

nouns end in ‘-self’ or ‘-selves’. The Spanish forms are shown in Table 8.2.

A special form exists for the combination of conwith sí, namely consigo.

The weak(i.e. non-prepositional) reflexive pronouns generally precede

finite verb forms, but see 8.5:

Me corté. I cut myself.

See Chapter 14 for more examples involving weak reflexive pronouns.

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8

Personal
pronouns

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