Daniel Hanson

Posted on 11/07/09

María del Sol,

I am very glad that you brought this up first on the chatboard. I
really had to fight the urge to be the first one to respond to this
post because I didn't want more people to think I am just here in the
chatboard to point out everyone's faults. No one is perfect. I
appreciate it when people take the time to correct me.

On 11/07/09, mariadelsol wrote:
> sorry André:
>
> Lo invité por darme dinero... It's not spanish.
>
> Lo invité para darme dinero... It's not spanish.

André,

The reason why these sentences are not grammatically correct is
because when you use infinitives with conjugated verbs and when you
use infinitives with prepositions, the subject must
remain the same for it to be grammatically acceptable——at least that's
what has been recommended by Spanish grammarians in the past. So, in
your examples it would need to be worded as follows:

Lo invité porque me había dado dinero.

Lo invité para que me diera/diese dinero.

As you can see, "él" is the subject in the subordinate clause, which
is different than the subject "yo" in the main clause.

Here are two examples that would work with just the infinitive after
the prepositions por and para:

Lo invité por no querer faltarle al respeto. ('I invited him so
as not to be rude.')

Lo invité para conocer a su hermana. ('I invited him in order
to meet or so I could get to know his sister.')

In these two examples, the subject of both verbs in the sentence is
the same person ("yo").

I hope this helps.

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