With or without reflexive pronouns

Question

I read elsewhere that when quedar is used to express the idea of ending up in an emotional or physical state, it does not require reflexive pronoun. Is this accurate ? So if I have a scenario of 2 persons fighting and the one of them left a mark on the second and it left him standing still from the shock. Do we use ‘se queda inmóvil’ or ‘queda inmóvil’ ?

Inma Sánchez · Answer

Hola AshlynQuedar in that context of ending up in an emotional or physical state is sometimes re-enforced with the reflexive pronoun (I just added a little not to the lesson to allow for some flexibility there), so you can say:Después del golpe quedó inmóvil.Después del golpe se quedó inmóvil. Sometimes the absense of the pronoun makes it sound a bit  more formal than when we use the pronoun. This meaning/context overlaps a bit with the other very similar, nearly identical meaning of quedarse + adjective: expressing the result of a change; this is because it's not always clear whether the result is a consequence of a change or a consequence of a specific action; for example you can say "se quedó pasmada" or "quedó pasmada" as you may be referring to being "surprised" after someone did/said something (an action) or simply because there was a change of opinion in your mind about something (this change of opinion may have happened after someone did something) - so we need to allow some flexibility here in terms of the absence or presence of "se".I hope this clarified it.Saludos