Reflexive verbs and nouns
I have two dumb questions in this post.
First, I must have misunderstood something from the video and I need to be sure I understand.
My "word of the day" sentence this morning was something like
Animamos nuestros pacientes a ducharse cada día.
We encourage our patients to shower every day.
In this case, I intended to indicate the patients shower themselves, the subject understood in English. Is the subject (patients) understood in Spanish? I had not seen that plural usage before, so I modified the sentence to be
Animamos nuestros pacientes a duchar sí mismos cada día.
which was wrong.
Question 1 - Is there a rule in Spanish that will select the subject of a reflexive verb? I'm not sure if I asked that correctly, but what is to prevent a reader from selecting the incorrect subject of the reflexive?
Question 2 - Partially related and still dumb, is it possible for a non-transitive verb (or a verb used in as non-transitive) to have a reflexive use?
3 Answers
Reflexive means that the subject and object of the verb are the same, so there can't really be much confusion.
Welcome to the world of "Spanish as a second/foreign language". As Lorenzo, quite correctly stated, the "classic" definition (for Spanish an many other languages) of a reflexive construction is that the subject and object of the verb be the same. Since only transitive verbs have direct objects, a necessary corollary of this is that the verb be transitive. That's the simple part.
The complications arise when there are constructions that bear a superficial resemblance to the reflexive construction. To borrow from a popular expression in English, it looks like a duck but it doesn't walk like a duck nor does it sound like a duck.
Generations of teachers of Spanish teachers have adopted the unfortunate habit of referring to anything that even vaguely resembles a reflexive construction as being reflexive. Traditional Spanish grammatical terminology aggravates the problem by referring to "se" as a "reflexive pronoun" even when it's not used in a reflexive construction.
To suggest that "se habla español (aqui)" is reflexive is total nonsense. Spanish does not speak itself.. "Me dormí a las once." does not mean "I put myself to sleep at 11:00." It means "I went to sleep at 11:00" and, in this case, is a way of turning a transitive verb into an intransitive one.
Detransitizing a verb is but one of many uses of the "se" in Spanish. In English, an alternative can be to use a real reflexive construction. For example, "lie" is an intransitive verb in English and the corresponding transitive verb is "lay". In the popular bedtime prayer, one might have said "Now I lie down to sleep, ..." but, since it's meant to rhyme, the meter requires an additional syllable. The solution: substitute the transitive "lay" for the intransitive "lie" and add the reflexive pronoun "me" (since the transitive verb requires a direct object) ; giving "Now I lay me down to sleep ..."
The only definition of "reflexive" that has the support of centuries of tradition (in various languages) is that the subject and object of the verb be the same,
The pronoun "se" has many different uses in Spanish. If you choose to label all of them as "reflexive", that is your choice (there is ample precedent). This course of action will cause you and your students a great deal of grief (since they will need, eventually, to unlearn what you have taught [if they continue with Spanish]). However, as Henri said, "Apres moi la deluge!"
This helps, but doesn' t completely answer my question.
Dogwood, please do not "accept" answers that don't answer the question. The purpose of the "accept" button is to put the best, correct, or most helpful answer on the top.
