Object pronouns in Romance languages

[A18]

In Spanish, an indirect object pronoun accompanies even an explicit reference to the indirect object. Hence, "Le escribí a Jones." It's by far the most irritating part of Spanish grammar I've encountered, though I should add that I'm still a beginner.

My question: Is this rule—or something like it—commonplace in Romance languages? In particular, are the French guilty of this outrage?

[12th Doctor]

In Spanish, an indirect object pronoun accompanies even an explicit reference to the indirect object. Hence, "Le escribí a Jones." It's by far the most irritating part of Spanish grammar I've encountered, though I should add that I'm still a beginner.

My question: Is this rule—or something like it—commonplace in Romance languages? In particular, are the French guilty of this outrage?

Generally speaking, French and Spanish are the two major Romance languages that are the least like the original Latin, in any number of ways, so I wouldn't be surprised if it were specific to only Spanish, or both French and Spanish and none of the others.  I don't know for certain, however, I'm just filling in space.

[memphis]

First off, in French you need a subject pronoun. Because so many of the verb forms are pronounced the same, you can't just infer it from the verb. I  never took Spanish so, I'm not totally sure what your Spanish sentence is. Guess it's I wrote it to Jones, which would be "Je l'ai écrit à Jones."

[A18]

Well, "le" is an indirect object pronoun meaning him, her, or you (formal, singular). In the sentence I posted, it referred to Jones.

Jones, then, is identified both explicitly and with a pronoun (for the same verb)—a rather odd concept. Literally, the sentence means "Him [I] wrote to Jones," him being Jones. Frustratingly enough, Spanish won't allow you to just specify the indirect object while omitting the corresponding pronoun.

Does French have a similar rule?

[ilikeverin]

Redundancy is very useful in languages, especially spoken ones.  Besides, you conveniently ignore the fact that Spanish lets you neglect to explicitly mention subject pronouns, which are forced upon English/French speakers constantly as a result of our either relatively uninflected (English) or often unspecific (French) verb systems.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I'm pretty sure nothing like that exists in French. While Memphis's translation of your sentence does have an indirect pronoun, it refers to what you wrote in that case, not to who you wrote.

[A18]

Redundancy is very useful in languages, especially spoken ones.  Besides, you conveniently ignore the fact that Spanish lets you neglect to explicitly mention subject pronouns, which are forced upon English/French speakers constantly as a result of our either relatively uninflected (English) or often unspecific (French) verb systems.

I also "ignored" that the District of Columbia is the capital of the United States, and that Christmas is in December. I ignored these things, as well as the one you mentioned, because none of them has the slightest relation to the subject matter.

[Speed of Sound]

All I can add is that Latin does not hold such a convention. "Scripsi espitulam ad Romanos/I worte a letter to the Romans", but then again, they dont require subject or subject pronouns or even articles. It is the tiny word hating language.

[ilikeverin]

Redundancy is very useful in languages, especially spoken ones.  Besides, you conveniently ignore the fact that Spanish lets you neglect to explicitly mention subject pronouns, which are forced upon English/French speakers constantly as a result of our either relatively uninflected (English) or often unspecific (French) verb systems.

I also "ignored" that the District of Columbia is the capital of the United States, and that Christmas is in December. I ignored these things, as well as the one you mentioned, because none of them has the slightest relation to the subject matter.

Someone woke up on the wrong side of prescriptivism this morning

[ilikeverin]

From a cursory check of various Wikipedia entries and websites, it doesn't appear like any Romance languages other than Spanish make such a requirement.  However, from personal experience, I'm not convinced Spanish has such a requirement, either.  If I'm telling you to "give me it", it's not like I say «¡Dámelo!... a mí...»  Similarly, I remember learning that when I say «Me gusta...», I can say «A mí me gusta...» if I want to emphasize the fact that it's me the thing is being pleasing to rather than someone or something else.  (For example: «A mí me gusta divagar de lingüística.»=to me rambling about linguistics is pleasing, but I'm not sure you feel the same way.)  The problem you're encountering is probably because of the imprecision of the third person objects.  If I say «Le gusta estar malhumorado.» ("Being grumpy is pleasing to him/her/it."), without context, your next question is probably going to be «¿A quién?» ("To who?").  Instead, I can just say «A Philip le gusta estar malhumorado.», so there won't be any confusion: hence the utility of redundancy.  In these cases, you should see the «a ...» as the attachment to the sentence as a whole (and to the «le» in particular), not the other way around.

[A18]

Not sure I follow.* I didn't say that the indirect object had to be specified. I said that the indirect object pronoun has to be included, even in cases where the indirect object is specified.

* – See; English can omit not merely the subject pronoun, but the verb as well.

[ilikeverin]

Right, and I'm saying you're thinking about it in the wrong way.  With your first example, the sentence shouldn't be thought of as «Le»+«Escribí a Jones.», but instead as «Le escribí»+«a Jones».  You're not accompanying an explicit reference to the indirect object with an indirect object pronoun; you're accompanying an indirect object pronoun with an explicit reference to the indirect object.  There are a variety of reasons that might be given for why it is that Spanish speakers might do this, but I will avoid discussion of redundancy and its utility "because [it does not have] the slightest relation to the subject matter"

[PGSable]

The same is true of French. For example, "I sent Jones a letter" would be « J'ai envoyé une lettre à Jones ».

However, you never use a pronoun to make an explicit reference to a direct object in French (which you do in Spanish if it's a person): "I called Jones" would be « J'ai appelé Jones » in French but "Llamé a Jones" in Spanish (while "I called the cat" would be "Llamé el gato," because the cat isn't a person).

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Pronouns are the bane of my efforts to learn Catalan.  Like most Romance languages (French being a notable exception), it generally doesn't require subject pronouns except for emphasis or clarity.  But Catalan likes to do things its own way.  Strictly speaking, it doesn't have subject and object pronouns, but strong and weak ones.  The strong pronouns are used as subject pronouns and as the object of prepositions,  The weak ones are used as object and reflexive pronouns, plus some other uses.  Then to make things fun, the weak  pronouns have multiple forms depending on how they are attached to the verb with even more rules (at least in Standard Catalan) about the order in which they are combined if you have more than one.

So, the nice little English pronoun him could be any of these ten forms el, l', -lo, 'l, li, -li, es, s', -se, or 's.  (It's not quite as bad as I make it out to be, but still...)

But back to your query Phillip, Catalan does make use of seemingly redundant pronouns as well when those pronouns would attach themselves before the verb.

[Daniel Adams]

The same is true of French. For example, "I sent Jones a letter" would be « J'ai envoyé une lettre à Jones ».

However, you never use a pronoun to make an explicit reference to a direct object in French (which you do in Spanish if it's a person): "I called Jones" would be « J'ai appelé Jones » in French but "Llamé a Jones" in Spanish (while "I called the cat" would be "Llamé el gato," because the cat isn't a person).

Actually it would be Llamé al gato, "al" being a contraction of "a el".

[PGSable]

Sorry, I missed this:

Well, "le" is an indirect object pronoun meaning him, her, or you (formal, singular). In the sentence I posted, it referred to Jones.

Jones, then, is identified both explicitly and with a pronoun (for the same verb)—a rather odd concept. Literally, the sentence means "Him [I] wrote to Jones," him being Jones. Frustratingly enough, Spanish won't allow you to just specify the indirect object while omitting the corresponding pronoun.

Does French have a similar rule?

Strictly speaking, no. You wouldn't say "I wrote him Jones" in proper French.

However, in substandard oral French, it is somewhat common to use a third person pronoun and to follow it with the corresponding noun in order to clarify. For example, you might start saying, "I wrote him a letter" and decide in mid-sentence that to need to clarify "him," in which case you would say "I wrote him a letter, [to] Jones" (« Je lui ai écrit une lettre, à Jones »).

This practice applies to all third person pronouns. If you wanted to say that Jones came to your house (Jones would be the subject in this case), you might say, "He came to my house, Jones" (« Il est venu chez moi, Jones »). Again, though, this is substandard French.

[PGSable]

The same is true of French. For example, "I sent Jones a letter" would be « J'ai envoyé une lettre à Jones ».

However, you never use a pronoun to make an explicit reference to a direct object in French (which you do in Spanish if it's a person): "I called Jones" would be « J'ai appelé Jones » in French but "Llamé a Jones" in Spanish (while "I called the cat" would be "Llamé el gato," because the cat isn't a person).

Actually it would be Llamé al gato, "al" being a contraction of "a el".

Really? I understand that "I called the fireman" would be "Llamé al [a el] bombero" even though "bombero" is a direct object, but that "I called the cat" would be "Llamé el gato" because the cat isn't a person. Or is "llamar" an indirect transitive verb in Spanish? In any event, "I saw the fireman" would be "Vi al bombero" while "I saw the cat" would be "Vi el gato."

[Bono]

Well, in Portuguese you can omit the object if it was mentioned in prior speech and use a pronoun declination of a verb, so "I wrote to him" becomes "Eu escrevi-lhe".

If you want to use the real object, you say "Eu escrevi a Jones", but 'Eu' means I in all circumstances, so it doesn't indicate to whom the action is directed at.

Don't know if this answers your question though..