Talk:se laver

se laver
Per the se verbs above, sum of part, +. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:12, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Weak keep and if so expand. There are two distinct uses here:
 * se = direct object: « Elle l'a lavé. » &rarr; « Elle s'est lavée. »
 * This is completely SOP.
 * se = indirect object: « Elle lui a lavé les mains. » &rarr; « Elle s'est lavé les mains. »
 * This is SOP from a French-speaker's standpoint, but many (most? all?) English-speakers learn the construction “se laver ___” long before they learn the construction “laver ___ à ___”. The former is the primary instance of the latter.
 * —Ruakh TALK 17:47, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * You are right, there are two possible uses. But you are wrong: they are not considered as SOP from a French speaker's standpoint. French speakers who say elle s'est lavée don't think she washed somebody; whom? herself, therefore I add s before the verb. Actually, se laver is considered as a verbe pronominal in French: you can find the definition of se laver at laver (not at s) in French dictionaries, but the definition is present, and this shows that French speakers consider it as something really worth a definition. For example, it's very clearly separated from laver in the Petit Larousse dictionary. Actually, English speakers are much more likely to consider it as SOP: they reason more, they feel less.
 * The best solution is probably to mention se laver in the laver page (because it's where most dictionaries mention it) but to also have a se laver page.
 * Some other French verbs are only (or almost only) used as pronominal verbs. On fr.wikt, some contributors tend to consider that they should only have a se ... page, other contributors only a page without the se, and other ones (including me) consider that having both is useful. Lmaltier 21:08, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * SOP doesn't mean that you do sit and reason out the meaning from first principles, only that you could. You say that French speakers don't think she washed somebody; whom? herself, therefore I add s before the verb; but then, they also don't think somebody washed his/herself; who? her, therefore I put the subject elle before the verb. This doesn't mean that "elle se lave" is non-SOP; it means only that competent speakers can assemble sentences without realizing they're doing it. —Ruakh TALK 21:37, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I was referring not to a conscious reasoning, but to a French speaker's brain: the brain assembles words, and this process is not conscious, of course. But in this case, the brain uses se laver as a single word, as a pronominal verb (it's called a verb), not as a combination of two words (a pronoun + a verb). This is what I was meaning, and this is what explains the presence of a definition in French dictionaries. blue car is blue + car, but se laver is se laver in the mind. Lmaltier 21:59, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * In that case, I don't think we're actually disagreeing with each other. :-)  —Ruakh TALK 22:17, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Redirect to laver, where this should be dealt with like all other pronominal verbs, ie as a separate context-tagged def line. < class="latinx">Ƿidsiþ 12:56, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
 * FWIW I would like to change our policy of not having French reflexive verbs unless they are always reflexive (such as s'agir, the impersonal verb) but I've found more than enough opposition on both this Wiktionary and the French one. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:58, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

redirected -- Prince Kassad 20:37, 21 March 2011 (UTC)