What are some ways to word "La silla está debajo de la mesa"?

Question

I would like to know how one would re-order the Spanish sentence "La silla está debajo de la mesa" to add more variety to a paper discussing location.
Thanks!

Answer 1

In Spanish, the order of the subject, verb, and associated objects or complements (such as adverbs) can be freely reordered.¹ Modifiers to each of those elements, however, must remain where attached, relatively speaking, to their parent element.

In this sentence, we have three "top level" elements: the subject (silla), the verb (está) and a locative complement (debajo). The complement is modified with a prepositional clause initiated by de (and the de can only follow it. The object of that preposition is mesa, which must come after the de. Mesa is determined by the article la which, as a determiner, must precede its associated noun. In other words, debajo de la mesa is a fixed word order that must move as a unit. Similarly, the subject silla is determined by the article la, and thus forms another fixed unit of la silla.

Now given a S(ubject), V(erb) and C(omplement), we can freely use any order we want:

• SVC - La silla está debajo de la mesa.
• SCV - La silla debajo de la mesa está.
• VSC - Está la silla debajo de la mesa.
• VCS - Está debajo de la mesa la silla.
• CSV - Debajo de la mesa la silla está.
• CVS - Debajo de la mesa está la silla.

All of these are perfectly grammatical sentences, and all may potentially be uttered depending on context and emphasis. For example, contrastive elements tend to be put in the front so you would use the CVS or VCS structure if someone asked if the chair was beside the table (because you're contrasting with under with beside). You'll often begin with the subject if it hasn't been previously announced (SVC — SCV is rare). Others will be used only with a particular intonation that's a bit complicated to explain and is something you will learn over time.

Of the six listed above, the most common ones will be SVC (the canonical or default ordering), VSC (especially common in subordinate clauses), or CVS (to emphasis the complement).