Spanish Grammar

Verbs of emotions (verbos de sentimiento) are one of the most important semantic-syntactical categories in Spanish. As it is obvious from the name, these verbs express emotions: to like, to love, to irritate, to disturb, to interest… This category is usually added by verb expressions of emotions: to put somebody out of temper, to draw the ire, etc.

The verbs of emotions have two arguments: a person who likes or dislikes something (the so-called “experiencer”), and the object causing the emotion (the so-called stimulus). So, in the phrase “I like flowers”, the flowers are the stimulus, and “I” is the exeriencer.

It is interesting that these verbs have some common syntactic features.

1. The verb of emotions coheres with the stimulus, and not the experiencer. This obvious fact (the verb almost always agrees with the subject) is often difficult for learners of Spanish:

Me encanta este perro – I like this dog a lot
Me encantan estos perros – I like these dogs

The experiencer at the beginning of the sentence, expressing, as they used to say, the “logical subject”, is perceived as the subject, so students often agree the verb with it. Teachers use various methods in this case. Some teachers give only the third person singular of the verbs of emotions (including, gustar). , It does work with a side-effect, though: later students don’t believe that other verb forms exist and cannot say simple phrases likeme gustas. It is more efficient to do a question-answer training on a regular basis:

– ¿Los coches? – Me gustan. – ¿El cine? – Me gusta.

2. The experiencer is always in the dative case (OI). All Spanish verbs of emotions require the dative case. So it should be translated like this

she’s irritated – le irrita (no *la irrita)
they are interested – les interesa (no *los interesa)

3. The stimulus noun always goes with a determinant: the definite article or possessive adjectives or demonstrative pronouns. For instance:

   Me gustan los gatos – I like cats
   Me gustan estos gatos – I like these cats
   Me gustan tus gatos – I like your cats

   This rule is important because in many cases in Spanish the noun following the verbs is used without articles or with the indefinite article. In some students’ books you can find typical mistakes like

   *Me gustan flores (correct: Me gustan las flores)

4. If the stimulus is a subordinate clause, the verb is in the subjunctive mood:

   Me gusta que hagas deporte – I like that you do sports

Pay attention to the fact that in this case in English the subjunctive mood is not used. So this rule is important to keep in mind.

Naturally, if we add a subordinate clause syntactically independent of the verb of emotions, the mood does not depend on the verb either:

Me gusta cuando cantas – I like it when you are singing (the subordinate clause of time does not depend on the verb gustar)

5. The experience of the verbs of emotions may not coincide with the subject of the subordinate clauses. In this case, the infinitive should be used instead of the subordinate clause:

   I want to live in Spain – cannot be translated as Me apetece *que viva en España, The correct translation is: Me apetece vivir en España

Let’s point out that some verbs may belong to two different categories. So the verb molestar can act as a verb of emotion:

Me molesta el ruido – Noise disturbs me

and as a two-argument transitive verb:

Voy a molestar a mi hermano – I’m going to disturb my brother

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