Spanish 路 Chapter 14 路 Lesson 4 路 Grammar primer

Participle clauses

On the AQA A-level grammar list.

The short version

Freeze it after haber, agree it everywhere else

Right after haber the past participle never moves: hemos escrito las cartas, whatever the object. Anywhere it describes a noun it is an adjective and must agree: una puerta cerrada, los libros escritos. The pair that catches everyone is he escrito tres cartas, frozen, against tengo escritas tres cartas, agreeing, because the participle now describes cartas.

Tengo escritas tres cartas.

I've got three letters written.

A whole clause in two fronted words

Front a participle and its noun and you compress an entire subordinate clause: no conjunction, no extra verb. Hecho el trabajo, descanso. Dicho esto, empezamos. The participle agrees with the noun it heads, which is why it is terminada la reuni贸n and not terminado. English needs 'once' or 'after' plus a verb to say the same thing.

Terminada la reuni贸n, se fueron.

Once the meeting was over, they left.

That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.

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Practice

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10-question session

One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 14 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.

Lesson 4 of 12 in this chapter

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