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Question about Romance language... | ||
Tags: Romance Languages | Idiom | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4636 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 1 of 8 06 February 2014 at 9:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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...fixed expressions. French, Spanish, & Italian anyway.
How come in fixed expressions such as "se la jouer" (French), "tomarla con alguien" (Spanish), & "farcela, spassarsela, mettercela" (Italian) the object is always "la"? What does the "la" refer to, if anything in particular? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| drygramul Tetraglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4468 days ago 165 posts - 269 votes Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: French, Polish | Message 2 of 8 06 February 2014 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As for Italian, it doesn't refer to anything in particular, it's just used for an unspecified object (which can be an action, an event or a thing). "La" has a neutral gender in this context, not a feminine one.
Edit: And it's not always -la, you can also have -lo For instance: c'era da aspettarselo, c'era da immaginarselo, etc. Even in this case, -lo has a neutral gender. Edited by drygramul on 06 February 2014 at 10:39pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6061 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 3 of 8 06 February 2014 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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At least in Italian, these verbs are called "verbi pronominali".
Nella lingua parlata si usano spesso alcuni verbi, costruiti con un doppio pronome, che hanno un significato idiomatico, diverso dal significato del verbo usato senza il pronome: cavarsela, prendersela, andarsene, farcela, fregarsene, ecc. Nella coniugazione di questi verbi il secondo pronome è invariabile, mentre il primo si accorda con la persona soggetto. Nei verbi costruiti con il pronome la, il participio passato si accorda con il femminile singolare. EDIT #1: Ciao drygramul, non avevo visto la tua risposta. Se la avessi visto, non avrei scritto la mia. EDIT #2: To the OP: I don't know whether my reply is understandable to you, I just thought something directly out of a grammar could be more eloquent. If it's not, I'm sorry. Just say something and I'll try to translate. Edited by Luso on 06 February 2014 at 11:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| drygramul Tetraglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4468 days ago 165 posts - 269 votes Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: French, Polish | Message 4 of 8 06 February 2014 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@Luso: mi sembra che la tua risposta non sia ripetitiva, ma anzi di completamento :)
Anyway the -la in "posso farcela" is not different from the "it" in "I can make it". In some periods and some regions of Italy -la was the most used form for the neutral pronome, and in others -lo was used instead. We use them because they have become permanent. Same goes for the -ce o -se in the same words, with the difference that the origin of the semantic value can still be traced. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nicozerpa Triglot Senior Member Argentina Joined 4326 days ago 182 posts - 315 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese, English Studies: Italian, German | Message 5 of 8 11 February 2014 at 2:27am | IP Logged | |||||
It's the same in Spanish, the "la" pronoun has no meaning by itself. The only difference is that in our language, "la" is always feminine. In some verbs the pronoun is "las", in plural. For example: "arreglárselas" (to cope, to manage). EDIT: According to the Dictionary of the Real Academia Española, verbs such as "arreglárselas" are called "locuciones verbales". Phrasal verbs, ha! Edited by nicozerpa on 11 February 2014 at 2:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mattvonparis Diglot Newbie France Joined 3924 days ago 3 posts - 5 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2 Studies: Spanish, Dutch | Message 6 of 8 26 February 2014 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As far as French is concerned, three hypothesis can be considered :
1) as in the answers above, "la" refers to nothing in particular, and therefore is neither masculine nor feminine. It is just used to make an emphasis. 2) "se la jouer" refers to someone who shows off, so it refers to an attitude. The word "attitude" is not explicitely said, it's implied, but in French, it is a feminine word, hence the use of feminine. 3) it reminds me of a theory I was taught in a linguistics course, and that somewhat would combine and give sense to the two previous hypotheses. In a sentence, some words may refer to other words that have been expressed before (predicate) or more broadly to an idea (not necessarily expressed explicetly), a situation or something we have seen or heard just before. In response, this infers the use of some words or gramatical forms in the rest of the sentence or the following sentences, to refer to the predicate, the idea or the situation concerned....especially if one wants to make a emphasis on/about it. This is called the phase 1/phase 2 theory that, for example, explains the use of -ING in English or the différence between THIS/THAT in most cases. This word "la" may refers to the showing-off attitude that leads one to say that somebody "se la joue" and not to a specific word of any gender. There's something important to keep in mind too : "se la jouer" is kind of colloquial, almost slang. This is not an expression meant to be logical as regard to the French grammar. Another thing is that the use of masculine or feminine is not always logical in French. Once a German friend made me notice that for a car radio, we say in French "un auto-radio", so we use the masculine whereas auto and radio, in French, are both feminine words... Not very logical indeed. Edited by Mattvonparis on 26 February 2014 at 9:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 8 26 February 2014 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My guess is that the gender of word for thing ("chose" French, "cosa" Italian, Spanish) has played a role, even in situation where there isn't even a concrete reference to a thing left.
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| Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5083 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian | Message 8 of 8 13 March 2014 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think the underlying root of "las" in "arreglárselas" might be "las cosas". Las cosas, me las arreglo --> me las arreglo. The reference to cosas isn't explicit but the grammatical gender is conserved. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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