tarvos wrote:It isn't beginner, but it certainly needs to be introduced before the C-levels.
And yes, the Spanish construction is impersonal. But it is different because in Spanish you can drop subject pronouns, so the way the structure ends up being used is different.
Dative constructions have been used in the Romance languages since time immemorial. It's not that strange to see it.
That you can then unleash a grammatical analysis on the subject doesn't really change the situation. You could also provide us with a thesis on the development of the present tense conjugation of French verbs and say that it is quite a complex matter and that there are details that still escape people at higher levels.
Deliberately being extremely obtuse doesn't help, though.
Emphasis added. I don't want to make this thread into an argument over Spanish or French grammar but the post here goes to the very heart of the subject of the thread: what do learners understand?
tarvos who certainly speaks excellent Spanish understands ""¿Le quedan más sitios para este tarde?" to be an impersonal verb construction similar to my French example "Est-ce qu'il vous reste des places pour ce soir?"
This is patently wrong because the verb "quedan" has as subject "sitios" as evidenced by the plural verb form. There is no subject pronoun such as ellos to be dropped here. Spanish does of course have an impersonal verb construction form such as in llueve, nieva, etc. used in the third person singular form which is one of the defining features of the impersonal verb form.
This is pretty clear but the important point here is that tarvos understands her example to use Spanish impersonal construction similar to the French one when in fact it's not the case. It seems that tarvos has an incomplete understanding of how the impersonal construction works in both languages. Notice that I said "incomplete" not "wrong". This could lead to grief with verbs like resultar in Spanish or venir in French that have impersonal and non-impersonal uses. But what is interesting here is that despite misunderstanding the Spanish impersonal construction, tarvos correctly uses the verb form quedan. Not bad.
Edit: The original quote from tarvos "¿Le quedan más sitios para este tarde?" normally should read "¿Le quedan más sitios para esta tarde?" I have left the original quote as is.