Why is the "se" needed in "la niña se baja del coche"?

Question

In the phrase

La niña se baja del coche

Why is the se needed as we know it is the girl that gets out of the car?

Answer 1

There are a number of questions in this site already dealing with pronominal verbs, which I would advise the OP to read. From the descriptive point of view, some Spanish verbs just work like that, and that's it. Other Romance language have them and use them extensively, and German has a lot of them as well. In English their use is much more restricted: only in phrases like pick oneself up and pull oneself together.

A lot of Spanish intransitive verbs of movement are pronominal. This makes some sense since the action is performed by the subject on theirself, which makes it reflexive (sort of): bajarse, subirse, irse, marcharse. They are pronominal and thus suggest reflexive action even when the action is involuntary: deslizarse, caerse, tropezarse. They are also pronominal when there's a decision not to move: quedarse, plantarse. Most can be used also as plain non-pronominal verbs, and some can double as transitive (bajar/subir las escaleras), but in general they are indeed pronominal most of the time.

The only reason I can think of for emphasizing the fact that the subject is performing the action on theirself, as in La niña se baja del coche, is that, as you begin to hear and parse the sentence, there is the possibility that the verb is actually transitive.

La niña baja del coche. (intransitive) — but:

La niña baja a su amigo del coche a patadas. (transitive)
La niña baja del coche a su amigo de un empujón. (transitive)

With verbs other than subir and bajar this might or might not happen, but there are often shades of meaning that make a pronominal form useful. For example, with quedar(se) there is again the contrast (not always very clear) between an action performed by the subject vs. an action perfomed by someone else:

La niña quedó sola en la casa. = "The girl was left alone in the house."
La niña se quedó sola en la casa. = "The girl stayed alone in the house."

I realise this is not a satisfactory explanation but I doubt there is one that covers all the pronominal verbs.

Answer 2

This is because the verb bajar can be used in a pronominal form when referring to geting off a vehicle or an animal:

4. intr. Quitarse de encima de un animal o de una cosa. Bajar DEL caballo. U. t. c. prnl. Bajarse DEL taburete.

5. intr. Salir de un vehículo. Bajar DEL taxi. U. t. c. prnl. Bajarse DEL avión.

Where U. t. c. prnl. means "Usado también como pronominal". That is, "also used as pronominal".

So both of these are equivalent and correct:

La niña baja del coche

La niña se baja del coche

Answer 3

That's because se in this case indicates the reflexive nature of the verb bajar. It will be easier to understand it changing the phrase this way:

The girl lowers herself.

So the agent (girl) of the verb to lower is the same as the patient (herself). herself in this case acts as se in the spanish sentence.

And it's worth mentioning that:

La niña baja del coche

is correct too

Answer 4

Consider

El sol baja por el oeste. The sun goes down in the west.

This doesn't take any effort on the part of the sun. It just goes down. Another example would be when the exchange rate in a country changes. For example, the dollar could go down, in relation to other currencies:

El dólar bajó dramáticamente ayer; a ver si se corrige hoy.

Now imagine a girl descending from a carriage or from the driver's seat of a carriage. Getting down from the carriage or the carriage's driver's seat is more involved. There's a dismounting or an extricating -- collecting of personal items, gathering up the long skirt, etc. This extra effort, on the part of the person dismounting, is expressed by using a reflexive pronoun. The pronoun makes the action more deliberate.

At least, that's how it feels to me.

Answer 5

As a Spanish native speaker I can tell you that we often use the pronoun se to mean she is doing so by herself.

For example:

La niña se baja del coche