How to conceptually translate "se aventuraron" vs "aventuraron"?
When I'm reading, I sometimes come across verbs that seem like they could do well just by themselves without the reflexive 'se.'
For example:
"Desde los primeros momentos de su historia y durante toda la Antiguedad se aventuraron a surcar los mares en busca de tierras extranas..."
I also used translator apps to check for a difference and couldn't wrangle out any by deleting the reflexive.
It seems to me that 'se' is being used as an expressive additive that isn't translated well into English.
Again, while I do know what reflexive verbs are, the necessity of using one in sentences like the above example seems superflous, but they are sometimes used rather than not.
If somebody could translate the difference between adding the reflexive or not and how that changes the expression.
Again, I feel this is something that is more poetic in the Spanish language rather than utilitarian, although I may be wrong.
Thank you
4 Answers
I am not an expert in Grammar but here is my input. This is not a reflexive verb, it's what we call "signo de cuasi-reflejo". You mentioned the impersonal and the passive with se, you are right! In this case, it's a passive. You can distinguish an impersonal with a passive because the impersonal can only be expressed in the singular, whilst the passive can be either singular or plural (both impersonal and passive have to be in the 3rd person).
Verbs that are likely to have a signo de cuasi-reflejo are verbs of movement (such as irse) and verbs that convey a mood change (such as enojarse).
There are verbs that always NEED this signo, it's compulsory: jactarse, quejarse, arrepentirse, arrellanarse.
You can't say something like: "María quejó" you need "María SE quejó" always.
You are also right about this being added when it's not necessary sometimes. It's called signo de cuasi-reflejo con valor expresivo. We may say: "Me comí una porción" but it would be totally fine if you said "Comí una porción".
But in your sentence, the "se" is necessary.
"Desde los primeros momentos de su historia y durante toda la Antiguedad se aventuraron a surcar los mares en busca de tierras extranas..."
I'll try to explain what I think is happening with this sentence.
First of all, it is passive se, not impersonal se in this instance. As aileribel stated, if it were impersonal se, the verb - adventurar would be conjugated in the 3rd person singular. The passive subject is los mares, a plural, hence the verb is conjugated in 3rd person plural.
In English: From the first moments of their history and throughout Antiquity the seas were ventured upon to sail them in search of foreign lands.
The Spanish sentence does not have an active subject. If it had an active subject, it might say...sailors ventured out to sail upon the seas in search of....
Unlike ser passive, which could include the agent - by sailors, for example - passive se is not supposed to reveal the agent. The reason for using the passive se is to emphasize the fact that the seas were ventured upon and sailed. The author, at least in this sentence, isn't pointing out who did the venturing and sailing. Perhaps, because sailors, pirates, castaways and all sort of people did the venturing and sailing and he doesn't want to use the non-specific "people" because this is probably understood.
In a nutshell, I wouldn't worry too much about these kinds of things. You're right, sometimes pronominal verbs can be used with almost identical meaning to regular verbs, sometimes it's impersonal se, sometimes se passive, etc. As long as you get the general meaning of the text, I think you would be better off spending your time reading more, having a conversation in Spanish, building your vocabulary, knowledge of idioms, etc. than worrying about exactly what grammatical structure is used in a sentence like this and why. (Unless you are a grammar scholar or need to for a test)
I don't know Spanish grammar well but I've tried to think about examples.
Yo aventuro una respuesta.
Nosotros aventuraremos una solución.
In general it seems that "aventurar" needs a direct object. You wouldn't say Yo me aventuro una respuesta.
On the contrary, you would say using "aventurarse"
Yo me aventuro a la deriva.
Nosotros nos aventuraremos dentro de esa selva desconocida
or
just Yo me aventuro. (without direct object)
Anyway let's see what grammar experts have to say..
In the example you gave, you can't omit the SE and say only aventuraron.
I figured it out but would still like more feed-back. It's called the impersonal or passive se.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWU_lvuUXrU
