A few questions about this excerpt from a Spanish news program
 

Here's the excerpt:

"Y ahora para contarnos qué está pasando en Nicaragua, nos acompaña la corresponsal del programa Aqui Ahora, Tifani Roberts y el escritor y analista Edmundo Jarquín, quien junto a ortos intelectuales y políticos nicaragüenses, llamó para la abstention de las elecciones en noviembre como una forma de resistencia. Ambos, gracias por estar aquí.

A) Is "nos acompaña" used to mean "accompanying us" or "we are accompanied by". Either way, the lack of a preposition is puzzling to me; I would think it would either be "nos acompaña por..." or "nos acompaña son"...".

B) I would also think that in the part where he goes "quien junto a otros intelectuales y póliticos nicaragüenses, llamó para la astention..." that you would have to use "llamaron" instead of llamó, since the intellectuals and politicians are plural.

C) In the software I am using (FluentU) the sentence fragment "llamó para la abstention de las elecciones" is translated as "called for abstaining from the elections". I would think that since there is a definite article in front of "abstention" that this could only mean "called for the abstention of the elections", and that "called for abstaining from the elections" could only be translated as "llamó para abstenerse de las elecciones". Please tell me why I'm wrong.

Thank you!

A) "accompanying us" :good:
Neither "Nos acompaña por..." nor "nos acompaña son"..." makes sense. :thinking:

If you want to say "we are accompanied by", this is the passive voice (much less often used in Spanish than in English, by the way); for which you would say "somos acompañados por".
If you say "nos acompaña por", then you must add the complement corresponding to the preposition; otherwise, it's a fragmentary sentence:
- Tifani nos acompaña por amabilidad. (She's with us because she's kind.)
- Edmundo nos acompaña por la calle. (He's with us in our wandering out in the street.)
...

As for "nos acompaña son", you can't use two conjugated verbs at the same time. It's either one or the other.




C) I would have said "la abstención en las elecciones", which mean you'd refrain from voting in the election.
-> He called for abstention during the elections.

"La abstención de las elecciones" is understood in context, but this would mean people should be abstaining from elections themselves instead of from voting, which is kind of weird, as elections are taking place anyway. :rolleyes:

Adding a little bit to what AdA wrote: in the first sentence, "nos acompaña" is active voice, "(he/she/you/it) accompanies us". The subject of this verb is "la corresponsal del programa "Aquí y Ahora", Tifani Roberts y el escritor y analista Edmundo Jarquín, quien junto a otros intelectuales y políticos nicaragüenses, llamó para la abstención de las elecciones en noviembre como una forma de resistencia".

This construction (active voice verb, followed by a long and complex subject) is normal and common in Spanish, and in this type of context it is much more common to have this type of long and complex subject follow its verb rather than precede it. (As a side note: when a subject is this long, it is common for the speaker to have the verb agree with the noun in the subject phrase that is closest to the verb, rather than with the number of the entire subject. This is the case in your transcript.)

Word order is much less permissive in English compared to Spanish: it is generally impossible to use an active voice verb and place the subject after the verb. When we need to place the subject after its verb, we resort to converting the verb to passive voice ("we are accompanied") and turning the active-voice subject into the passive-voice patient ("by XYZ"), or else saying something like "accompanying us are xxx".

The first alternative is possible in Spanish ("somos acompañados por XYZ"), but Spanish prefers active voice over passive voice in this context.

The second alternative has no direct equivalent in Spanish, and trying to simulate the English construction as *"nos acompaña son" or *"acompañándonos son" sounds very strange or makes little to no sense.

"...llamo para la abstención" is clearly an anglicismo or even plain Spanglish. It's a spanishized version of "called for abstention".

In Spanish it is said "llamó a la abstención" (still influenced by the English phrase) or more properly: "hizo campaña por la abstención" or "propició la abstención de los votantes"