Song-title in Cuban Spanish

[Laurence Horn]

I just heard from my expert (a non-resident expert in my case) that this is indeed widespread.  "Ingestive" (eating and drinking) verbs like _comer_ and _beber_ occur freely, indeed usually, with SE, whose distribution is subject to a number of grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic conditions.  Here's a 2011 variationist Ohio State U. dissertation on the topic by Juliana de la Mora for anyone interested: 

http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi/De%20la%20Mora%20Juliana.pdf?osu1306954111


LH



On Mar 24, 2012, at 10:00 PM, Michael Newman wrote:

> 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
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
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