The word "ponga" means "I put" but when put in this sentence: Que solo la mire de lejito y se ponga asi" is "That he only looks at her from afar and gets like this" "Ponga" doesn't become "I put" anymore in that sentence, and I'm very confused as to why and what this is called
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Isn't it both first person and third person?– Draconis ♦Commented Sep 13, 2023 at 20:39
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1Note that que yo ponga ... and que el ponga ... are both subjunctives. If the pronoun is left out, you need to use context. The se is part of the context here.– HenryCommented Sep 14, 2023 at 14:54
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It’s exceedingly common in languages with inflectional morphology that different forms of the same word have the same surface shape. Consider ‘put’ in English, which can be either base form (infinitive/imperative/present subjunctive), present tense (except third singular), past tense, or past participle. In Spanish, all verbs have the same form in the first and third singular in the present subjunctive, imperfect, conditional and past subjunctive – that’s just how Spanish verbal morphology works. So to say that ponga means ‘I put’ is inaccurate: it means ‘[that] I put/[that] he put/put!’.– Janus Bahs JacquetCommented Sep 17, 2023 at 10:55
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