3.6.5 The Subjunctive in Adjectival Clauses
First things first, what is an adjectival or adjective clause? It is a clause that functions like an adjective. We’ll look at examples from English and then Spanish and we’ll look at how to recognize an adjective in either language.
English:
- My cat is little.
- Little is an adjective. Adjectives are words that describe nouns.
In Spanish we would say:
- Mi gato es chico
- Remember, adjectives in Spanish are going to agree with the gender and number of the noun they describe. That makes them easier to identify in a sentence!
Now, let’s say I’m looking to adopt another cat but this time I want a little female cat. This is what that would look like in English:
- I’m looking to adopt a little female cat.
In Spanish the same information looks like this:
- Busco adoptar una gata que sea chica.
- “Busco adoptar una gata” is my main clause. These are my plans and I am stating them as a fact. The subjunctive is in the dependent clause: que sea chica because I am not looking for a specific cat, I am looking for any cat that is small and female. If the pet adoption place has 7 cats that fit that description, any of them might be my future pet.
We can check that a clause is an adjectival clause by doing a substitution test. Do these two sentences say more or less the same thing?
Busco adoptar una gata que sea chica
Busco adoptar una gata chica
If the answer is yes, then you know you have an adjectival clause because “chica” is an adjective.
Here are a few more examples. Can you identify the adjectival clauses? Can you identify the adjectives?
Necesito un bolígrafo rojo
Necesito un bolígrafo que escriba con tinta roja
Quiero tomar vacaciones a un lugar que sea tropical
Quiero tomar unas vacaciones
Urjo un departamento nuevo
Urjo un departamento que tenga ventanas grandes
Examples from our reading:
La era del imperialismo: “Para evitar este resultado, el capitalismo ha requerido siempre de un «fuera», externo a sí mismo, donde pueda abaratar el trabajo y la naturaleza con impunidad y apropiarse de ellos a gran escala”
Why is this an adjectival clause? What word introduces the clause? What is it saying? Why did the author use the subjunctive in this clause?
Activity #1
Activity: the subjunctive in adjectival clauses #2
- In chapter 1 you may have read about “Platón y la perfección”. Let’s pause a moment to write a few comparisons between the real world where we live and Plato’s perfect world. We will use the indicative to write about the real world but we will need the subjunctive to talk about Plato’s perfect world.
Completa la tabla con tus propios ejemplos:
