Is percatarse reflexive or no?
In the word of the Day Percatarse is discribed as a reflexive verb. However, when entering Percatarse in the verb conjugation feature on this website, it gives the conjugation for percatar and says it cannot be a reflexive verb. Is this an anomaly of some kind or is there an explanation? Thanks for any reply.
9 Answers
No!!!!!! The fundamental definition of "reflexive" (in any language) is that the subject and object of the verb be the same (the action "reflects" back on the subject). In English, a simple (but not infallible) test is whether or not one can use (myself, himself, herself, etc.) as a reasonable translation.
Many teachers/textbooks of Spanish have supported the fallacy that any time you encounter an infinitive with "se" tacked on, it is reflexive. This is simply sloppy terminology (or, because of laziness, a reluctance to invent better [more accurate] terminology).
Consider the sentence "Me bebí toda la botella." ("I drank the whole bottle.") There is simply no interpretation that can make this an action performed by the subject on himself.
Your choices are fairly simple. You can insist that any infinitive to which "se" can be added is (necessarily) reflexive (in which case, you will always have trouble understanding/constructing sentences in Spanish) or you can tackle the (admittedly) difficult subject of pronominal verbs. Actually, there is a third choice, you can redefine "reflexive" to mean any verb to which "se" can be attached. In the last case, of course, you will be abandoning the traditional definition and disallowing the possibility of speaking of reflexive verbs in any language but Spanish.
A search of this site (I'd suggest "reflexive" and "pronominal" as keywords) should turn up a reference article by Lazarus that treats the question in more detail. He also posted a link to an outstanding article (but, unfortunately , aimed at "teachers of Spanish as a second language) with even more examples of "se" that are not reflexive.
I have just looked in my Spanish Oxford Dictionary
It lists this verb as follows:
Percatarse (A1) v pron to notice
Examples suggest that it is conjugated as a reflexive verb:
ni se percató de mi presencia
= She didn't even notice r realize I was there
¿te percaste de ese pequeño detalle?
= Did you notice or spot that little detail?
I would therefore say that it is reflexive in its action: ie the way you form and use it You can normally recognise a reflexive verb by the presence of the reflexive pronoun se at the end of the verb which corresponds to the 3rd person singular.he/she/you (sing)
That's very odd. I get the same message when I put it into the conjugation tool:
Este verbo no puede ser reflexivo.
I think that's an error because we clearly are using it as a reflexive verb; however, maybe someone with more knowledge of pronominal verbs can shed some light on this?
An article by Lazarus: transitive-reflexive-pronominal
An article recommended by Lazarus (but in Spanish): different uses of "se"
I particularly like the 2nd one but it's not aimed at beginners.
The comment in the conjugation tool is obviously wrong. They then proceed to conjugate it as a reflexive verb.
Wikipedia has an interesting take on reflexive vs. pronomial verbs. They claim pronomial verbs are a subset of reflexive verbs.
In grammar, a reflexive verb is a verb whose semantic agent and patient (typically represented syntactically by the subject and the direct object) are the same. For example, the English verb to perjure is reflexive, since one can only perjure oneself. In a wider sense, the phrase refers to any verb form whose grammatical object is a reflexive pronoun, regardless of semantics; such verbs are also referred to as pronominal verbs, especially in grammars of the Romance languages.
So, by their reasoning, any pronomial verb, amongst others that are not "literally reflexive", are automatically reflexive. I'm not enough of an expert to argue the point.
I agree that differences lie with reflexive and pronomial and I do not consider them the same thing although some dictionaries call pronomial a subsection of reflexive, as if it were a part of being reflexive... I don't see how since nothing "reflects" back on the user. It should be noted that the Spanishdict dictionary lists under percatar "percatarse de" = reflexive verb, and under percatarse "percatarse de" = pronomial verb. So our site says it is both.
I concur with the above. "Pronomial" and "reflexive" are not the same thing.
Percatarse is in the SpanishDict dictionary as meaning "to notice something". Just about any verb in Spanish can be made to be reflexive. If the subject and object of the verb is the same entity, it is reflexive. Hope this helps.
