Cifi wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 3:15 pm
gmads wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 10:24 am
Both verbs, "cansarse" and "cerrarse" seem to be reflexive but they are not, they are actually pronominal verbs (of which the reflexive can be considered to be a particular case).
I still kind of fail to see why these are not reflexive.
I can definitely relate to that 
Spanish is my native language and eventhough I have always liked using it as correctly as possible, I had never actually reflected about pronominal verbs —one simply speaks one's native language without giving it too much thought— until I began learning Italian. While I spent quite a bit of time on this topic at the time, the truth is that sometimes I still have to take a time to ponder carefully to see what specific role a pronominal verb is playing.
Unless one really likes to delve into the grammatical aspects of a language, I'd say that the best course of action regarding this topic, is to simply look up the verb in a dictionary, determine which of the meanings is the one one wants to express, and then take note of the form of the verb that corresponds 
Once a verb starts to be used in our everyday conversations, its usage will become second nature.
Anyway, having said that, and since I like to complicate my life trying to understand grammar, I will help you in this same endeavor 
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Cifi wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 3:15 pm
Up to now I asked whether or not the person acted upon would be oneself, which is true for peinarse, lavarse, bañarse, but also for cansarse as far as I can tell.
First of all, I must say that the verb "cansar" can be a little tricky to explain because of its possible roles (e.g. as an affective verb) and meanings (e.g. to tire, to annoy). Thus, I will just focus on the "to tire/to get tired" meanings.
If one considers it, "cansar/cansarse" (to tire/to get tired) is actually the result of doing something else instead of being a true action, or something that can be done. Let's consider the following two sentences:
- cansé al muchacho por hacerlo correr un kilómetro (I tired the boy by making him run a kilometer)
- el muchacho se cansó tras correr un kilómetro (the boy got tired after running one kilometer)
Regardless of which verb was used (the regular, non-pronominal, verb "cansar" or the pronominal verb "cansarse") and how it was used (in a transitive way or in an intransitive way, respectively), we can see that in both of them the "tiring" so-called action is the result or what happened after the boy ran one kilometer, thus, in neither case a "tiring" action was truly done.
Let's see another example with this verb. If I say, "me cansé de estar sentado" ("I got tired of being sit"), that does not mean that "I tired myself," but that the action of being sit "got me tired. However, if I say, "me lavo todos los días" ("I wash myself everyday"), that actually means that there is a washing action that I do on myself.
A comparison with two similar verbs may help to see the workings between pronominal reflexive and pronominal non-reflexive verbs. Let's consider the pronominal Spanish verbs "levantarse" (with the specific meaning of "to get up from bed") and "despertarse" ("to wake up"). We can agree that "waking up" is not an actual reflexive action, but something that just happens at a particular moment during our sleep. However, "getting up" (not in the sense of rising oneself, but of making oneself leave one's bed) is definitely a reflexive action.
-- me desperté a las 7 de la mañana (I woke up at 7 in the morning) << pronominal, non-reflexive
-- me levanté diez minutos después (I got up ten minutes later) << pronominal, reflexive
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Cifi wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 3:15 pm
In that other thread, you make the destinction based on transitive vs intransitive
I said that because being aware of transitivity in a verb can help determine its function or how it can be used, or at least to get a good approximation of how it should be used.
The five usage cases I listed there are like the first general rules to be able to begin to understand how pronominal verbs work. Given the generality of the explanations, one can only move in one direction but not in the opposite; for example, one can say that women are humans, but one cannot say that humans are women. So, knowing that the verb "ahogarse" is a pronominal verb also lets me know that it then must be an intransitive verb, however, to know that a verb is intransitive only allows for the possibility of it being also pronominal.
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Cifi wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 3:15 pm
what do I do to find out while role a reflexive pronoun takes? Maybe with those verbs that have a non-pronominal form, we could compare that to tell?
Me lavo la cara - here, me looks like an indirect object. If I would wash someone else's face, it would be le lavo la cara (a mi hijo).
But if we use it without direct complement, simply Me lavo, I would have thought it is a direct object, like *lavo la ropa: la lavo?
Regarding the pronouns:
- If we know that a verb is used reflexively, we also know that the clitics { me, te, etc } are reflexive pronouns, and that they work as the direct or the indirect object pronoun of the sentence. The following sentences are not grammatically correct, but I am allowing myself to be as literal as possible to transmit the idea:
-- yo me lavo = yo lavo a mí
-- tú te lavas la cara = tú lavas la cara a ti
- If we know that a verb is a pronominal non-reflexive verb, we then know that the clitics are just the required form of the "se" particle once it gets separated from the verb and gets conjugated according to the grammatical person:
-- ahogarse
-- yo me ahogo
-- tú te ahogas, etc
but they do not represent neither the direct nor the indirect object of the sentence, that is, the sentence, "yo me ahogo," doesn't mean, "yo ahogo a mí," because "me" is only a particle, so to speak, that is part of the verb.
Once again, as I am trying to make clear the topic in question, some of the following sentences are not 100% correct.
-- lavo la pared (I wash the wall) -- "la pared" is the direct object
-- la lavo (I wash it) -- "la" is the direct object pronoun
-- lavo al niño (I wash the boy) -- "al niño" is the direct object
-- lo lavo (I wash him) -- "lo" is the direct object pronoun
-- lavo a mí mismo todas las mañanas (I wash myself every morning) -- "a mí mismo" is the direct object
-- me lavo todas las mañanas (I wash myself every morning) --"me" is the reflexive pronoun (direct object pronoun)
-- lavo las manos al niño (I wash the hands of the boy) -- "las manos" is the direct object, and "al niño" is the indirect object
-- le lavo las manos (I wash his hands) -- "le" is the indirect object pronoun
-- lavo las manos a mí mismo (I wash the hands of myself) -- "las manos" is the direct object, and "a mí mismo" is the indirect object
-- me lavo las manos (I wash my hands) -- "me" is the reflexive pronoun (indirect object pronoun)
-- casi te ahogas en el río (you almost drowned in the river) -- "te" is the clitic pronoun (second person, singular) from the "se" part of the verb ("ahogarse")
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Cifi wrote: ↑Wed Jul 27, 2022 3:15 pm
So, what really is the key here?
I would say that in order to deduce or know how a verb is being used in a particular sentence, the key is to take into account not only its grammatical aspects, but also its meaning. As I mentioned in the post I thereafter wrote in the referenced thread, the meaning of a verb can change radically between one use and the other (transitive/intransitive), and it is this meaning what lets us know if the verb is being used reflexively or not.
Let's take again the verb "levantarse," but now with the sense or meaning of "protruding from a surface or a plane," for example:
-- los árboles se levantaban sobre el horizonte (the trees rose above the horizon)
At first instance, it could seem that the trees were rising themselves above the horizon —thus leading one to believe that the verb is being used in a reflexive way—, but that is not the case because in this particular sentence the verb is just letting us know that the trees were visible above the horizon, therefore, in this sense the verb is just a pronominal non-reflexive verb.
So, another key to all this is just to be aware that there is a general category that consists of the so-called pronominal verbs, that within this group there is a set of verbs that can be used in a reflexive way, and that it is not possible to determine that quality by just looking at their form because they look the same (me despierto, te despiertas, me levanto, te levantas), therefore, one needs to focus on their meaning.
Another key aspect worth considering is that reflexive verbs designate voluntary actions that a living being does on himself/herself, while non-reflexive verbs usually express movement, thoughts, feelings, changes of state, impersonal or involuntary events, or the state of being of things.
-- el sol se esconde tras las nubes (the sun hides behind the clouds)
-- no es bueno que te enojes por eso (it is not good that you get angry about that)
-- la puerta se abrió sorpresivamente (the door suddenly opened)
-- los niños se fueron a dormir temprano (the children went to sleep early)
-- ustedes se acordaron de mi cumpleaños (you remembered my birthday)
-- él se imaginaba descansando en la playa (he imagined himself resting on the beach)
-- tu comida se enfría y tú sigues sin venir a la mesa (your food gets cold and you keep on not coming to the table)
-- el florero se cayó de la mesa y se rompió en mil pedazos (the vase fell off the table and broke into a thousand pieces)
-- incluso los adultos se confundieron con ese truco de magia (even adults were confused by that magic trick)
-- de repente se soltó el aguacero y me empapé hasta los huesos (suddenly the downpour broke out and I got soaked to the bone)
As I initially said at the referred post: "'Pronominal verbs' make up a large and relatively complex topic" 
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