In English, a verb has 4 basic forms:

1. bare form: eat, rain, love, know
2. present participle: eating, raining, loving, knowing (to be used as a verb, it needs to be accompanied by the verb be, e.g. I am eating; but it may also be used as an adverbial, e.g. Knowing that he would come, I waited; as a modifier I saw a man eating an apple; as a noun: I like eating apples)
3. past tense: ate, rained, loved, knew
4. past participle: eaten, rained, loved, known (to be used as a verb, past participles need to be accompanied by the verb have, e.g. I have eaten.

Spanish verbs have many more forms than English verbs because:

1. There is typically a different form of the verb depending on the person that performs the action, the event, or undergoes the state.
2. Some verb forms that are complex in English (e.g. I will eat) are simple words in Spanish (e.g. comeré)
3. Spanish has a set of verb forms kwown as the subjunctive, which is used in certain types of embedded clauses, which English doesn’t have.
4. Spanish has more verb options, such as two past tenses (preterite and imperfect) which are expressed in more roundabout or ambiguous ways in English.

Verbs typically have required complements that must explicitly appear along with the verb (or perhaps be implicitly ‘understood’).

1. Practically all verbs require what is known as a subject, a noun phrase (or equivalent) that is what the verb is saying something about, e.g. My mother came. She likes apples.
2. Some verbs also require what’s known as a direct object, some patient-like entity that is what the agent (the subject) acts upon, e.g. e.g. My mother bought apples, I saw your book.
3. Some verbs also require a type of complement that is known as an indirect object, which refers to an entity which is somehow the experiencer or recepient of the action or event expressed by the verb, e.g. I sent the book to my mother, I sent my mother the book, This movie bored me to tears. It pleases my mother that I’m coming.

In English, subjects and objects are typically bare NOUN PHRASES (e.g. you, my mother, the man who came to see me).

In Spanish too, subjects are BARE NOUN PHRASES (e.g. tú, my hermano, el hombre que vino a verme). Direct objects are BARE NOUN PHRASES if they do not refer to human beings. If they refer to human beings, DIRECT OBJECTS are preceded by the preposition A (the 'a personal'), which also has other functions in Spanish (such as to indicate direction, e.g. "voy a la biblioteca", or recipient, e.g. "di el libro a mi hermano".)

All other noun phrases in a sentence must be preceded by a PREPOSITION, a function word which says what function the noun phrase has in the sentence, e.g. [for my brother], [under the table], [about this book].

Clauses can be embedded inside other clauses:

These are clauses which are not main clauses. That is, clauses which are embedded in or dependent on another clause. The type of dependence can be of three types, depending on the function of the complement clause.

1. NOUN CLAUSE: these clauses act as a complement of a verb, either the subject or an object, e.g. Sé [que vas a venir] "I know that you’re going to come"
2. ADJECTIVE CLAUSE (or relative clause): as regular adjectives (e.g. tall, big, silly) these clauses modify nouns, that is, they say something about common noun, typically to delimit its reference, e.g. El hombre que vino "The man [who came]"
3. ADVERBIAL CLAUSES: as regular adjectives (e.g. tomorrow, now, happily) these clauses modify verbs, that is, they say something about the verbal action

Embedded clauses are typically preceded by a special word which links it to the other clause:

1. Complementizer: que "that" Sé que vas a venir (unlike in English this que can never be ommitted)
2. Relative pronouns: que "who/which/that", quien, etc.
   El hombre que vino "The man [who came]"
3. Adverbial conjunctions: cuando "when"