Every verb could be changed to a "gustar" verb if you change it to passive.. or not?
It seems, and I may be wrong, that every verb or almost every one can be turned into a verb like Gustar if you first change the sentence to a passive construction.
ejemplo:
Gabi finds French movies boring.
passive French movies are found boting (by Gabi)
Gustar verb construction A las peliculas Francesas Gabi les encuentra aburridas.
Otro ejemplo:
We killed the man (normal verb, matamos el hombre)
passive The man was killed (by us)
Al hombre le matamos
I might be getting a couple of rules mixed up and cofusing myself even more so thats why I'd like someone to comment on this... Am I right? Thanks in advance.
6 Answers
Gustar verb construction A las peliculas Francesas Gabi les encuentra aburridas.
I think people are getting really confused here. This sentence is not passive, and the pronoun is not correctly used: it should be "las". It is not a "gustar" type construction either. It is just a normal sentence with its elements rearranged.
Al hombre le matamos
Same thing: it is not passive and it should be "lo".
These constructions are called in Spanish "enfáticas de relativo" (or "ecuacional"), and they have nothing to do with passive ones. All they do is to bring a part of the sentence to the start as the focus, and refer to it later in the sentence. Passive sentences have "ser" (or "to be" in English) followed by a past participle, and they can hide the subject, which is what happens in "The man was killed", where the killer is not mentioned. However, both "Matamos al hombre" and "Al hombre lo matamos", WE are killing the man; there is no "ser", no past participle, and the subject has not been hidden, so it is not passive.
Ah, these emphatic constructions are NOT gustar-like at all. They are identical to the "normal" constructions, but with the order of the elements changed. In English this can be done too: "This butter is the one I like" instead of "I like this butter".
Furthermore, in Spanish only transitive constructions have a passive counterpart, and "gustar" and similar verbs are intransitive, so they cannot be rewritten in passive.
As you know, gustar and similar verbs are confusing to the English speaker because what is the subject in English becomes the object in Spanish and visa versa.
Well... that's not entirely true. English no longer has a verb like "gustar" (it used to) with the same meaning, but it has "disgust", which not only is formed with "dis-" + "gustar", but it is used exactly like gustar: the disgusting thing is the subject, and the person who feels the impression is the object. The only difference is the word order, but syntactically they are identical. Other examples in English include:
That fascinates me.
That interests me.
That bores me.
That surprises me.
All the above sentences use a gustar-like construction both in English and Spanish.
I think it would be better stated that every verb can be changed from transitive use to intransitive use by using the passive voice.
Gustar like verbs form intransitive sentences.
And I am not sure that it is correct for all verbs. That is the reason why the passive-reflexive se can usually be looked at also as the "detransitizing" se.
El torpedo hundió el barco. (hundir-transitive)
El barco se hundió. (The ship sank. or The ship was sunk....intransitive or passive voice?)
Hi. I think the best answer your question is ¨no.¨ As you know, gustar and similar verbs are confusing to the English speaker because what is the subject in English becomes the object in Spanish and visa versa.
A Chris le interesan las peliclas. Movies are interesting to Chris. (Chris is interested in movies.)
A Chris le facinan las pecliculas. Movies are fascinating to Chris. (Chris is fascinated by movies.)
A Chris le gustan las peliculas. Moves are pleasing to Chris. (Chris likes movies.)
A verb like ¨encontrar¨ can´t be use this way, but as Q mentioned you can approach the same meaning with the ¨passive¨ or impersonal construction.
Se mató el hombre. The man was killed.
I hope I haven´t confused you more and I actually congratulate you for thinking through this subject so critically, because these verbs just threw me off for months when I first started studying!
I don't think so. Gustar, when it means "to be pleasing," is always intransitive, that is, it cannot take a direct object.
A las peliculas Francesas Gabi les encuentra aburridas.
There is no need for the preposition "a," and "les" should be "las." But even after the fixes, the sentence still sounds a bit odd. "Francesca Gabi encuentra aburridas las películas" or "Francesca Gabi las encuentra aburridas" are my suggestions.
Matamos el hombre / Al hombre le matamos.
The first one lacks the personal "a" (note: this is different from the preposition), so it should be "Matamos al hombre". The second one can be fixed by changing le to lo. Again, I think it (the 2nd one ) sounds odd even after the fix, even if it is grammatically correct.
Le is an indirect object pronoun. You may have read around here the term leismo (using le & les as direct object pronouns interchangeably with lo, la, los & las) but I suggest you stick to the norm first.
every verb or almost every one can be turned into a verb like Gustar
It is a mistake to think of "gustar" as in any way special. Like all other verbs in Spanish (or any other language that has verbs that can be called "transitive"). Syntactically and semantically "gustar" is a perfectly normal transitive verb (it takes a subject and a direct object). The only difference is when you compare its use in English to the "preferred" translation (most commonly used construction) that it appears "different"/"strange". If your native language were any other Romance language, you would not find it strange at all (it's exactly the same in French and Italian [and, I'd bet, in Portuguese and Romanian]). If you were more conscious of what you say in English, you would realize that there are plenty of English verbs that act the same way. The last time I posted a reply on this topic, I listed several dozen English verbs. These were the ones that occurred to me off-hand. Precisely because these verbs are not considered special in English, there is no easy way to find a comprehensive list of "please-like" verbs.
Statistically, when you have an English sentence that describes the interaction between a human (or other sentient being) and an inanimate object, the subject of the verb will usually be the sentient being and the object of the verb will be the inanimate object (we tend to think of the sentient being as the "actor" and the inanimate object as being the "recipient" of the action. However, this is by no means the only way to view the world. (nor is it always the most accurate way).
This preferential "world-view" is, precisely, the fallacy that underlies the foolishness of Superman's x-ray vision. As did the classical Greeks, it assumes that the human must be the actor (thus x-rays shoot out from his eyes) Of course we now know that the actor is light (or rays in the visible spectrum [or in Superman's case an extended spectrum]). The sentient being's eye is simply the passive recipient.
P.S. "please-like" verbs are by no means unique to English and the Romance languages. In Japanese (which is related to neither English nor the Romance languages), "kore ga suki desu" (This is pleasing to/pleases." but, more colloquially "I like this.") is the usual construction. "ga" marks the subject ("this" whatever). The (understood) (indirect) object is "me".
