Breakdown of Inconscientemente, dei por mim a ceder ao impulso.
a
to / at (direction)
por
through / by / for / because of
mim
me (after prepositions)
ceder
to yield
dar por si
to suddenly realize
inconscientemente
unconsciously
o impulso
the impulse
Questions & Answers about Inconscientemente, dei por mim a ceder ao impulso.
How does dei por mim a ceder mean "I suddenly realized I was yielding"?
This uses the aspectual periphrasis dar por + reflexive pronoun + a + infinitive. It specifically conveys catching yourself in the middle of an action or suddenly realizing you are doing it, similar to "I found myself yielding" in English. Here, dei is the past tense of dar for "I".
Why do we use mim instead of the regular object pronoun me here?
Why does the preposition a appear twice in this sentence (a ceder and ao impulso)?
They serve different grammatical purposes. The first a is part of the continuous structure a + infinitive (a ceder), showing the action is ongoing, like "-ing" in English. The second a is required by the verb ceder (to yield), which needs the preposition a (to) before the object. It contracts with the definite article o to form ao.
Can I use this structure to say I suddenly realized someone else was doing something?
This specific phrase (dar por mim/ti/si) is reflexive, used exclusively for sudden self-realization. If you want to say you caught someone else in the act, you would change the preposition to com and use a regular pronoun, such as dei com ele a ceder (I caught him yielding).
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