Song-title in Cuban Spanish

[Michael Newman]

My husband, a Spanish syntactician. The phenomenon is called "inherent se" (se inherente).  It has syntactic consequences, for example you can't say "me comí manzanas" (without a determiner).  It creates some semantic differences, maybe not that different between I got a car and I got myself a car. Not everything can be explained in terms of simple mapping into truth conditional semantics. Why would anyone who speaks a human language expect it to be otherwise? 




Michael Newman
Associate Professor of Linguistics
Queens College/CUNY
michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu



On Mar 24, 2012, at 9:09 PM, Ronald Butters wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ronald Butters <ronbutters at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Song-title in Cuban Spanish
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> You ate your (inalienably possessed) mango?
> 
> But it seems that is an idiom. I find this, and more, at =
> <wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=3D1089821>:
> 
> 1.
> In Argentina te la comiste has several meanings: that someone didn't see =
> something or that someone forgot something:
> 
> Te comiste la coma en esa oraci=F3n.
> Estuve llamando a todas las personas de la lista pero a esa me la com=ED.
> 
> It's also common in sports to express that you missed an easy goal or =
> volley, etc.
> 
> =BFC=F3mo pudiste comerte ese gol? (Te lo comiste/devoraste/morfaste)
> 
> It also has sexual implications (you can figure this out).
> 
> =A1Saludos!
> 
> 2.
> See also=20
> "Papi te Comiste mis Papas"
> 
> (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DYc0j34qu3Is)
> 
> 3.
> AND (at <http://www.tubabel.com/definicion/35141-te-la-comiste>)
> 
> 
> TE LA COMISTE: forma de expresar gratitud: Frase utilizada com=FAnmente =
> entre amigos en momentos de agradecimientos; por ejemplo=85 cuando =
> alguien hace un favor muy grande por uno. O cuando un allegado nos da un =
> obsequio muy anhelado. =93Te la comiste=94 =3D =93Eres lo m=E1ximo=94; =
> =93hiciste bien al darme eso=94, "mejor, imposible". Tambi=E9n esta =
> expresi=F3n se le dice a alguien que se ha destacado en algo, por lo que =
> tiene este significado tambi=E9n: =93Lo haz hecho excelente=94.
> 
> On Mar 24, 2012, at 5:43 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> 
>> Orquesta Aragon: "_Te_ comiste el mango"
>> =20
>> "You ate _you_ the mango"?
>> =20
>> Google Translate has:
>> =20
>> "You ate the mango,"
>> =20
>> a standard translation.
>> =20
>> I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable in Spanish to know whether this is
>> a true parallel to the English construction. But, WTF?
>> =20
>> --
>> -Wilson
>> -----
>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
>> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> -Mark Twain
>> =20
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