The Spanish preposition "a" is used in transitive sentences when the object is definite and animate, for example in
Veo a mi hermana
see.1sg ? my sister
"I see my sister"
How does one gloss the preposition in this usage? I couldn't find any examples.
Spanish personal a is an example of differential object marking, so we can compare how other differential object markers are glossed.
The Wikipedia page for differential object marking includes glossed examples from Sakha:
кини яблоко-ну сии-р-∅ kini yabloko-nu sii-r-∅ NOM apple-ACC eat 'She/he is eating the/a (particular) apple.'
vs
кини яблоко сии-р-∅ kini yabloko sii-r-∅ NOM apple eat 'She/he is eating some apple or other.'
Here the marker is glossed as ACC, with the fact that it's a differential object marker (and so would be absent on many other direct objects) not being explicitly noted.
Lambie's answer links to Camacho Ramírez's 2022 paper Differential Object Marking and Labeling in Spanish (available here) which includes several glossed examples of personal a. As the paper is primarily concerned with the precise conditions around personal a, many of the examples are somewhat overcomplicated for the purposes of an answer here, however gloss 29a is illustrative:
Juan vio a una actriz, a María Juan see-PAST ACC an actress, ACC Mary [sic] 'John saw an actress, Mary'
As in the example of differential object marking in Sakha, we can see that personal a is glossed as ACC.
"personal a" is an English term used in teaching Spanish.
In Spanish, they (the Real Academia Espanhola) explain it this way, under the uses of the preposition a:
LA PREPOSICIÓN A EN EL COMPLEMENTO DIRECTO Como regla general, el complemento directo lleva la preposición a cuando hace referencia a personas u otros seres animados, y no suele llevarla cuando designa cosas. Existen, sin embargo, numerosas excepciones, así como algunas alternancias y ciertos casos dudosos:
• Llevan siempre la preposición a los nombres propios de personas y animales: Ayer vi a Manuela; Tienes que sacar a Canelo.
• Los nombres comunes de personas y animales llevan preposición cuando van precedidos del artículo u otros determinantes que los identifiquen: Ayer vi a mi amiga; Tienes que sacar al perro.
• No la llevan cuando no son identificables, bien por ir sin determinante, bien por ir precedidos de un u otros indefinidos:
La universidad debe formar investigadores; Causaron muchos heridos.
Con un/una se dan numerosas alternancias. Obsérvese la diferencia entre Busca (una) traductora (‘alguna, la que sea’) y Busca a una traductora (‘una en particular’).
Here is the answer to the question:
- Conditions on DOM in Spanish
In Spanish, the differential object marking (DOM) seems to respond to two general conditions: certain characteristics of the object, and certain properties of the verb.2 Consider the following sentences3:
The grammaticality of (1a) shows that a preposition A is mandatory with animate objects, and the impossibility of (1b) shows that the mark is not possible with inanimate objects. Thus, it is possible to establish the following first condition in relation to the Spanish DOM: The Animacy Condition: Direct objects can be marked with A if they are animates. In the literature, the participation of animacy in the DOM of Spanish is widely accepted (Torrego (1998); Aissen (2003); Rodríguez-Mondoñedo (2007); López (2012); Bleam (2005); Von Heusinger and Kaiser (2011); and Brugè and Brugger (1996), among others. For an analysis of the animacy feature in the syntax of Romance languages, see Cyrino (2018)). However, there are some cases where direct inanimate objects can be marked with A:
In this article, the topic of DOM in inanimate objects will not be developed; however, I would like to sketch some hypotheses about (2).4 In cases such as (2a), the inanimate object would have been animated. In (2b), the morpheme A would not be a DOM mark; these are verbs that always govern the preposition A (see Camacho Ramirez 2019).5 In (2c), the DOM mark would be DOM, and would express plural. Cases such as (2c) are restricted to verbs that have a feature [quantize] in the verb, according to Rodríguez-Mondoñedo (2007). Therefore, we can say that the presence of A with inanimate objects (2) does not override the proposed Animacy Condition. [and the article continues]
Open AccessArticle Differential Object Marking and Labeling in Spanish by Rafael Camacho RamírezORCID Linguistic Department, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo 05508-070, Brazil Languages 2022, 7(2), 114; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020114 Submission received: 28 December 2021 / Revised: 18 March 2022 / Accepted: 23 March 2022 / Published: 6 May 2022 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring the Syntax-Semantics Interface in the Romance Languages)
The first image functions just like the OP's question.
