Morir....se?

Question

Helloes!

I have a question about this sentence, taken from a book called "A First Spanish Reader": "Mis abuelos maternos no viven, han muerto." The meaning is clear, the grandparents on his mother's side no longer live, they're deceased. I'm wondering about the "han muerto" part though: is it okay like that, should it be reflexive (se han muerto perhaps?), are there specific cases where the reflexive pronoun should or should not be used? The dictionary suggests some non-reflexive uses but all of them have the manner specified - murió apuñalado, murió asesinado, murió ahogado, not just "died".

Thank you in advance!

Good question. I´m curious about this too, and look forward to your answers.. - rogspax, Apr 10, 2013

Answer 1

Most of the time you can use either interchangeably. I believe morir is more formal and polite so you'll never be wrong to use morir when speaking of someone's death.

Morirse is a little less formal, softer if you like. For this reason people may use it more when referring to the death of their own relatives or to express an emotional reaction.

Also for morirse I think the se is called the dative se and can reinforce the verb so you are likely to see it used in expressions such as ...

me muero de ganas de verte / I'm dying to see you

You may find this mini lesson interesting.

Fabulous, thank you for the explanation and the great lesson :) - Manity, Apr 10, 2013

my pleasure :) - Kiwi-Girl, Apr 10, 2013

Interesting. I haven´t seen the term dative used for Spanish, but I´m very used to it with German, where it is used, among other things, for almost all reflexive constructions, plus, anything that is an indirect object. Thanks for the insight. - rogspax, Apr 10, 2013

This is an interesting article, see para 5 on morirse and the dative of interest concept - http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/346235?uid=3738728&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21101884907903 - Kiwi-Girl, Apr 10, 2013

Very interesting article indeed. I've been observing similarities between my native Slavic se and the Spanish one and felt something was amiss. Thanks again! :) - Manity, Apr 11, 2013