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Reflexive Pronoun Question | ||
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| Solidaridad Newbie United States Joined 4613 days ago 8 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 4 20 April 2012 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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1) FSI says that this sentence means "Two cups of Jose's got broken":
A Jose se le rompieron dos tazas. But it says that this sentence means that "The little boy tore his shirt": Al chico se le rompio la camisa. Are these the same construction? Is there any way to tell just by reading a sentence whether you are saying that "your plate" was broken rather than "you broke the plate"? 2) Also, when it says "The table was broken," it uses "me" as the pronoun. Is "me" the default when something was done and the person who did it is unknown? If not, what do you use? Le? Se me rompio la mesa. Why not Se le rompio la mesa? Does Se me rompio la mesa imply that it was your table at all? Or that you broke it? (see question 1 above). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tiyafeh Pentaglot Newbie Israel Joined 4779 days ago 12 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English, Modern Hebrew*, Portuguese, Spanish, Latin Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (Written), German, Greek, Aramaic, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 2 of 4 21 April 2012 at 12:24am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Native Spanish speakers or more advanced learners please correct me if I'm mistaken,
but this is what I know: 1. Yes, it is the same construction. As far as I know 'Se te rompió el plato´would mean 'You broke the plate', with the implication that it was an accident; 'Rompiste el plato' would also be translated as 'You broke the plate', but would suggest this was done deliberately. 2. A more literal translation of this sentence is 'I broke the table'. 'Me' is used only for the first person singular. 'Se le rompió la mesa' means 'He/she broke the table'. To say that the table was broken without mentioning who broke it you would say 'Se rompió la mesa' without the 'me/le'. I think this page explains it rather well: http://www.elearnspanishlanguage.com/grammar/verb/accidental reflexive.html 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 3 of 4 21 April 2012 at 11:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I am uneasy about the translation "The little boy tore his shirt" of the sentence "Al chico se le rompio la camisa". To me it just means that the boy's shirt somehow was torn, maybe through a rough tumble or by running through a scrub - not that he did it himself and certainly not that he did it on purpose. And with this interpretation the two examples under 1 are exactly parallel.
The examples however show that the person referred to has to witness the event or at least that the person has to be affected by it. The pronoun functions as a dative or indirect object. The complicating factor - which isn't directly relevant for the translation of the examples, but certainly in a broader analytical perspective - is that even direct objects in Spanish are preceded by "a" if they denote persones ("golpeó al muchacho")- so in a way you could say that anything happening to persons in Spanish has a tendency to make them 'dativized' onlookers to the event. And inversely: using the reflexive construction in question here amounts to disclaiming the responsability for certain actions, such as breaking cups or getting your shirt torn - as long as it isn't done on purpose. The translation process actually obscures what really is going on in the foreign syntax. The English sentences may be used in the same situations as the Spanish ones, but at closer inspection they don't mean the same thing. Syntax isn't meaningless, and it isn't innocent. Edited by Iversen on 21 April 2012 at 12:13pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Javi Senior Member Spain Joined 5982 days ago 419 posts - 548 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 4 of 4 22 April 2012 at 11:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Actually, the meaning of the Spanish indirect pronoun here is rather diffuse and we'd need more context to provide an accurate English translation. It could be one of this: Two cups of Jose's got broken (Joe owned the cups that could have been broken for a number of reasons, for example the wind blew them down) Joe broke two cups (although we are not suggesting that he did it on purpose. The cups could have been Jose's or someone else's cups) So "le" here could be pointing to the responsible for the action, the performer of the action, the one affected by it or the one that had some kind involvement with the object.
They are one and the same construction.
You're right, the table was broken = la mesa se rompió (there's not need to introduce "me" or "le")
As I said above, it could be both. Edited by Javi on 24 April 2012 at 10:11pm 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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