When i put the word -"se" ?
What does the word "se" means here: "la nina se despierta"? Thank you
3 Answers
In that sentence (and I will only explain that sentence because the use of "se" is EXTENSIVE), it means "she wakes herself up". "Se" is a reflexive resource when the subject of a sentence does things to him/her/itself. It is used because if you just write "La niña despierta", it's amiguous: you don't know who is she waking up, it may be herself or somebody else. If you need a more "grammatic" explanation, just ask for it! I always try to put it simple because not everyone are language specialists. I hope this answer can help!
Now I made a search here, and found this. Check out Lazarus' answer.
Despertar, a transitive verb, means "to wake somebody/something up." If you add the pronoun se (despertarse), it becomes a pronominal (and intransitive) verb, which in turn means "to wake up."
"La niña se despierta" = "The girl wakes up."
I disagree that it is a reflexive verb, for it begs the question, "how does someone wake himself up?" This may sound silly, but I think someone must be awake so that he can wake people up, and thus someone waking himself up would not be logical. He just wakes up, and that's it. This again is a case of "se" used to de-transitivize (make it non-transitive) a verb.
