Reflexives & Pronomial Verbs
But since I didn’t really explain it, reflexive verbs need their reflexive pronouns to be understood as reflexives.
It’s especially necessary when you have verbs that mean different things without the reflexives.
Like poner is “to put”, but ponerse can be “to put on” like ponerse ropa is “to put on clothes”
If you said pon/ponga/pongan ropa it could be interpreted as you’re telling someone to put clothes somewhere; like pon la ropa en el armario “put the clothes in the closet”... it’s different from something like ponte el abrigo “put on the coat”
But the use of the pronomial [reflexive pronoun] when dealing with reflexives serves a grammatical function.
When you’re dealing with dativo ético there’s no grammatical reason to have the me, te, se, nos, os used... but it is useful for semantics [what things mean], which is why you’d see comerse used as a “reflexive” command
*Note: As a true reflexive, comerse means “to eat oneself / to consume oneself” or “to eat away at”
Linguistically speaking, reflexives are reflexive when the subject and the object are the same; you can “put clothes (somewhere)” or you can “put clothes (on oneself)”... since the person “putting the clothes on” is the subject and also the person receiving the action of having the clothes put on [the object], that makes it reflexive
But in a true linguistic sense comerse as “to eat” or “to eat up” is not a true reflexive; in te comes una pizza “you eat a pizza”, the “pizza” is understood as the object, but the subject is different.
Pronomial verbs consist of:
1. reflexives
afeitar = to shave afeitarse = to shave oneself
pintar = to paint pintarse = to put on makeup
decir = to say decirse = to talk to oneself
despertar = to wake / to awaken (someone else) despertarse = to wake up (oneself / on one’s own)
lavar = to wash lavarse = to wash oneself [lavarse el cabello “to wash one’s hair”, lavarse las manos “to wash one’s hands” etc.]
2. reciprocal reflexives [two or more subjects doing something to each other]
enamorarse de alguien = to fall in love with someone [reflexive or reciprocal] se enamora = he/she falls in love se enamoran = they fall in love [two separate people OR as reciprocal, “they fall in love with each other”]
casarse = to get married se casa = he/she is getting married se casan = they’re getting married [potentially to each other]
conocer a alguien = to know someone conocerse = “to know oneself” [as a true reflexive] se conocen = they know each other se conocieron = they met each other se conocían = they used to know each other
3. dativo ético
and you see it a lot with things like comerse, imaginarse, caerse, creerse, saberse, dormirse, and morirse... where the meaning is more about how you’re supposed to interpret it, and less about what it literally means
*Note: se is also used for passive voice, impersonal, and sometimes when you have to do indirect + direct objects; it’s a very versatile particle in Spanish