Logos

Words / cls.spa.determinante

el

Identity

Lemma
el
Part of speech
cls.spa.determinanteread off the URL segment (in turn parsed from the LEXEME id by lib/routes.ts’s posAndLemmaOf), because Lexeme carries no pos field yet (LAN-217/LAN-274). This route is built to prefer node.data.pos as the field once that migration lands; until then, the id is the only source and this line says so rather than hiding it.
Frequency rank
frequency rank: not recorded. Nobody has written this yetnot recorded
Gloss
The determiner presenting a referent as one the hearer can already identify, taking four shapes for gender and number.

The definite article is the only word class in the language whose whole business is definiteness, and it carries gender and number in the same four shapes: el, la, los and las. Two facts about it are stated elsewhere in this graph rather than here. Its masculine singular shape fuses with two prepositions, and it appears before a stressed initial a in a feminine noun phrase where the feminine shape would be expected. A countable singular noun cannot stand as an argument without a determiner, which is what makes the choice between this word and the indefinite one obligatory rather than free.

Sourced from:

  • Nueva gramática de la lengua española (2009)grammarentryno public licenceretrieved 2026-08-04by Real Academia Española and Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española
  • A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish (Butt and Benjamin)grammarentryno public licenceretrieved 2026-08-04by John Butt and Carmen Benjamin

Paradigm

Non-finite forms (no person, so no coordinate in the five-column grid):

  • alThe obligatory fusion of the goal preposition with the masculine singular definite article into one written word.
  • delThe obligatory fusion of the preposition of origin and possession with the masculine singular definite article into one written word.
  • elThe masculine singular definite article, the shape that fuses with two prepositions and that stands before a feminine noun beginning with a stressed vowel.
  • lasOne shape belonging to two words at once: the feminine plural definite article, and the feminine plural unstressed direct object pronoun.
  • laOne shape belonging to two words at once: the feminine singular definite article, and the feminine singular unstressed direct object pronoun.
  • losOne shape belonging to two words at once: the masculine plural definite article, and the masculine plural unstressed direct object pronoun.

Class memberships

has-a edges to CLASS objects (06-surface.md §5.2) — the door back into the grammar. Subsumption (is-a) is not available here: it is same-type-only (A3), so a LEXEME cannot is-a a CLASS.

Examples

Each example declares its dialect and tier, per 06-surface.md §5.2 (“the interface ranks and labels rather than silently mixing registers”).

No examples are recorded for this lexeme (Lexeme.examples is optional; absent key = unstated, per lib/schema/nodes.ts’s own note — never a stub sentence invented to fill the section).

Where the grammar discusses this word

05-vocabulary.md §10.9’s own requirement: “a vocab entry links back to the grammar.” has-a edges to CATEGORY and inbound selects edges, both real graph edges rather than a generated cross-reference.

No CATEGORY membership or selects edge is recorded for this lexeme.