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Question

I wanna know what is the difference when I say to someone in Spanish : ¿te dormiste?( you slept yourself)

and if I say just ¿dormiste? (did you sleep or you slept). I know that reflexive used with this verb and the action is done on the subject ( the subject and object are the same one) but, what if I sleep not by myself . I hope that there is someone who could understand my thought of this. saludos a todos .

Answer 1

¿Te dormiste? means did you fall asleep?

¿Dormiste? means Did you sleep?

are you native speaker? but I wanna know in the first one it means like : you did sleep you who did the action ? - bonita45, Apr 8, 2013

I am a native speaker. If I am asking if you fell asleep, I am assuming you did the actual sleeping. The logic is the same as in English. - francobollo, Apr 9, 2013

Answer 2

francobollo gave you the answer you asked for. You're trying to force literal translation of English, plus, the verb is not dormir but dormirse, which is NOT reflexive but pronomial. I have posted the following from lazarus1907 one of the grammar greats of all time.

Grammatical terminology can be very problematic when different people use the same terms for different things, but it is even worse when we use the same terms for different languages with different grammars.

Reflexive means that the action is done (or reflected) upon the subject, and although in English grammar it is normal to talk about reflexive verbs, in Spanish and many other languages, 'reflexive' is a term that makes more sense for situations and constructions, not for verbs. In other words, if you see someone else, it is not a reflexive construction, but if you see yourself, it is a reflexive construction. Some pronouns look different in reflexive constructions, but others don't, and verbs are not necessarily intrinsically related with the idea of 'reflexive'.

'Pronominal' means 'relative to the pronoun', and in most grammars this terms refers to constructions where the pronoun (hence 'pronominal') agrees with the verb and the subject. This definition excludes constructions like the impersonal or the passive reflexive, that are formally classified differently. A few pronominal constructions are reflexive, but the rest, although they are likely to concern the subject, are not executed by the subject, which is why 'reflexive' makes little sense.

In any case, almost no native understands these differences even though they speak perfect Spanish. These grammatical differences do not really help to improve your Spanish; only your ability to analyse it formally.

Thank you for the answer but ,my question is: are there two situations to use the verb dormir? the first one is when I sleep my self I use dormirse, and the other situatio is when I put the action on otherone so I will use just the verb dormir am I right? - bonita45, Apr 9, 2013