Editing Spanish language (section)

== Grammar ==
{{Main|Spanish grammar}}
[[File:Cervantes Jáuregui.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Miguel de Cervantes]], considered by many the greatest author of Spanish literature, and author of ''[[Don Quixote]]'', widely considered the first modern European novel]]

Most of the grammatical and [[Linguistic typology|typological]] features of Spanish are shared with the other [[Romance languages]]. Spanish is a [[fusional language]]. The [[Spanish nouns|noun]] and [[Spanish adjectives|adjective]] systems exhibit two [[Grammatical gender|genders]] and two [[Grammatical number|numbers]]. In addition, articles and some [[Spanish pronouns|pronouns]] and [[Spanish determiners|determiners]] have a neuter gender in their singular form. There are about fifty [[Grammatical conjugation|conjugated]] forms per [[verb]], with 3 tenses: past, present, future; 2 [[Grammatical aspect|aspects]] for past: [[Perfective aspect|perfective]], [[Imperfective aspect|imperfective]]; 4 [[Grammatical mood|moods]]: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative; 3 persons: first, second, third; 2 numbers: singular, plural; 3 [[verboid]] forms: infinitive, gerund, and past participle. The indicative mood is the [[Markedness|unmarked]] one, while the subjunctive mood [[Subjunctive mood in Spanish|expresses uncertainty or indetermination]], and is commonly paired with the conditional, which is a mood used to express "would" (as in, "I would eat if I had food"); the imperative is a mood to express a command, commonly a one word phrase – "¡Di!" ("Talk!").

Verbs express [[T–V distinction]] by using different persons for formal and informal addresses. (For a detailed overview of verbs, see [[Spanish verbs]] and [[Spanish irregular verbs]].)

Spanish [[syntax]] is considered [[Branching (linguistics)|right-branching]], meaning that subordinate or [[Grammatical modifier|modifying]] [[Constituent (linguistics)|constituents]] tend to be placed after head words. The language uses [[Preposition and postposition|prepositions]] (rather than postpositions or inflection of nouns for [[Grammatical case|case]]), and usually—though not always—places [[adjective]]s after [[noun]]s, as do most other Romance languages.

Spanish is classified as a [[subject–verb–object]] language; however, as in most Romance languages, constituent order is highly variable and governed mainly by [[topicalization]] and [[Focus (linguistics)|focus]]. It is a "[[Pro-drop language|pro-drop]]", or "[[Null-subject language|null-subject]]" language—that is, it allows the deletion of subject pronouns when they are [[Pragmatics|pragmatically]] unnecessary. Spanish is described as a "[[Verb framing|verb-framed]]" language, meaning that the ''direction'' of motion is expressed in the verb while the ''mode'' of locomotion is expressed adverbially (e.g. ''subir corriendo'' or ''salir volando''; the respective English equivalents of these examples—'to run up' and 'to fly out'—show that English is, by contrast, "satellite-framed", with mode of locomotion expressed in the verb and direction in an adverbial modifier).