When "se hace" follows a noun, when it doesn't. Pronomial, impersonal

Question

• El amor se hace fuerte - Love gets strong. (not makes one strong) (hacerse pronomial, hacerse = becomes, gets)
• El amor te hace fuerte - Love makes you strong. (hacer + te) (not gets here because you use te, but I don't fully understand why se hace doesn't work)
• No se hace una oferta como esto todo los días (They don't make an offer like this everyday, impersonal se)
• An offer doesn't get strong? The offer doesn't get stronger? Impossilble to say that?

I don't think I get the reasoning unless impersonal cannot act after a noun such "el amor", the noun being not allowing to act upon the verb, therefore allowing the full pronomial use, rather than being set upon like "te hace" does. Gracias.

The 2nd example is not limited to using TE. It depends on the object the verb is modifying. El amor la hace fuerte (her); ...Nos hace fuertes (us); Os hace fuertes (you plural). If you use se hace fuerte it is reflexive (me hago, te hace, nos hacemos) etc - gone, Jan 25, 2011

4th example -- Love, while an object, can grow and get stronger (it's a feeling). An offer is inanimate and incapable of getting stronger. Even in English. - gone, Jan 25, 2011

Answer 1

The word pronomial does not exist!

One dictionary has made a silly mistake, and the word seems to be spreading, partly thanks to this forum. I have many grammars and grammatical essays written in English, and the word they use is pronominal, from Latin pronominalis, from pro- + nominal + is. Or are you going to say "the nomial head of a school" and a "nomial fee" too?

You can confirm this in the dictionaries Merriam-Webster, Oxford, The American Heritage, Collins, Cambridge, Longman, the Encyclopædia Britannica, and the best grammars written in English (check David Crystal). Wikipedia has only an article for "pronominal", but several people have blundered the spelling in the word in parts of other articles.

• El amor se hace fuerte - Love gets strong. (not makes one strong) (hacerse pronomiNal, hacerse = becomes, gets)

Strange sentence: "love gets stronger". Anyway, it is pronomiNal.

• El amor te hace fuerte - Love makes you strong. (hacer + te) (not gets here because you use te, but I don't fully understand why se hace doesn't work)

"Love makes you strong". Why would you want to use "se" here?

• No se hace una oferta como esto todo los días (They don't make an offer like this everyday, impersonal se)

It is not impersonal, but passive reflexive. That "como esto" doesn't sound like native Spanish, where we'd say "así".

• An offer doesn't get strong? The offer doesn't get stronger? Impossilble to say that?

Grammatically you could, but why would you want to say that an offer gets stronger anyway?

I don't think I get the reasoning unless impersonal cannot act after a noun such "el amor", the noun being not allowing to act upon the verb, therefore allowing the full pronomNial use, rather than being set upon like "te hace" does. Gracias.

None of those sentences are syntactically impersonal: all of them have a subject, but "se" changes those subjects from "agent subjects" to "experiencing subjects". But I don't quite understand what your problem is anyway.

Answer 2

4th example -- Love, while an object, can grow and get stronger (it's a feeling). An offer is inanimate and incapable of getting stronger. Even in English

An offer cannot become stronger, but it can become bigger, better or sweeter. A bid (a synonym for offer in some cases) can be strong and become stronger or be made stronger. That an offer cannot become stronger in English is just a peculiarity of usage; it has no basis in logic or grammar.

Answer 3

Hi all,

I love these discussions. Subtleties like these make Spanish such a beautiful language to explore and learn.

Hacer una oferta is not an idiom. It's actually the most common usage of the verb hacer: hacer algo.

Impersonal expressions such as Se vende esta casa /Se hacen tortas por encargo/Se arreglan vestidos/Se hacen ofertas are shortened versions of what would require many more words to express.

Spanish does not have the luxury of being a brief language like English. "Help Wanted", "For Sale" show this intrinsic ability. The examples above are mere exceptions of when Spanish can be succinct.

I hope this helps!

"Hacer una oferta" is a collocation. It does not work in all languages, and there are many uses with "hacer" that don't make sense in other languages. - lazarus1907, Jan 26, 2011

Answer 4

No se hace una oferta como esto todo los días (They don't make an offer like this everyday, impersonal se)

Your last sentence is just like "Se habla español" (passive construction without an expressed agent). As to its similarity to the preceding sentences despite its different interpretation/understanding, I can only suggest that "hacer una oferta" is an idiom and that its idiomatic sense takes precedence over other possible meanings.

One might also point out that there is a difference at the grammatical level, too. In your first two sentences, you have se/te hace + adjective, while in the third you have se hace + noun. Whether this difference adjective/noun is significant (or reflected in other expressions), I don't know.

Answer 5

I think that in your first example love is being ´antropomorphosized´.

Juan se hace fuerte.

It´s not like in Se hace el amor a domicilio

You're too much! I'm sure Jeezle is even more confused now... - gone, Jan 25, 2011