Sei stato Ti sei comportato bene o male? :D E che tipo di dolci (giocattoli, ecc) vorresti ricevere?
(grazie Grammaticaitaliana per la correzione)
Su.Ki.,
You're welcome. I saw your message just now, I was busily writing Bob other messages.
Maybe you can find them useful too.
As to 'cavarsela', the verb in that idiom, it can be classified as a 'verbo procomplementare', like 'avercela', 'farcela', etc.
Io MI sono comportato
tu TI sei comportato
lui/lei SI è comportato/a
noi CI siamo comportati
voi VI siete comportati
loro SI sono comportati
I know all of this can look like a 'mess' to a learner, but I hope I will have time to help you 'unravel' all this mess with a more in-depth explanation. Don't worry, it's easier than you can imagine!
Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe you are at a very advanced level and don't need much help.
G'bye!
I think I can understand why you made that little mistake:
1) you used the verb 'comportare' instead of 'comportarsi' (the latter is the correct form in this case);
2) then you tried to formulate the present perfect (passato prossimo) of 'comportare'. 'Comportare' forms perfect tenses with the auxiliary 'avere', but since in your mind there was the verb 'comportarsi' (even though you didn't use it), and maybe you know that 'comportarsi' forms perfect tenses with the auxiliary 'essere', you tried to use 'essere' to formulate the present perfect, but you made a passive form instead, the 'present perfect passive' of 'comportare': 'sei stato comportato' (by the way, 'comportare' is a verb which is almost exclusively used in the third person, singular and plural, and is very rare in the passive form).
I think English speakers can easily mistake while trying to form an active perfect tense with the auxiliary 'essere', maybe they confuse it with a passive, because in English only 'to have' is used to form active perfect tenses, while 'to be' is used for the passive.
So just to recap:
- you wanted to write an (of course) active form of the present perfect of 'comportarsi' (ti sei comportato);
- but you ended up with a passive form of the present perfect of 'comportare' (sei stato comportato) (active form: hai comportato).
'Comportare' is a transitive verb which stands for 'involve', or 'imply'.
'Comportarsi' is an 'intransitivo pronominale' verb (it means that the suffix 'si' hasn't a real 'reflexive value', it's just a formal particle), which stands for 'behave' (which is the meaning you wanted to translate into Italian). 'Si' is a pronoun used as a suffix in the infinitive, but when you make 'finite' verb forms, the pronouns, as in the normal reflexive verbs, come, detached, at the beginning of each verb phrase:
