on 20-Dec-2016 (Tue)

In grammatical terms, an object is the person or thing affected by the action or event, as opposed to the subject, which is the person or thing responsible for it. See: direct object, indirect object.

(present, past) Verbs normally have a present participle and a past participle. Unlike other (finite) verb forms, the participle cannot be used on its own but is found together with other verb forms. The past participle is used with the verb avere or essere to form the passato prossimo tense: non abbiamo mangiato gli hamburgers ‘we didn’t eat hamburgers’. When used with essere, it agrees with the subject: nel 2004 siamo andati a Los Angeles ‘in 2004 we went to Los Angeles’. The present participle, less frequently used, changes form when used as an adjective i . . . cantanti.

We use this term for the compound past, a past tense formed by auxiliary and participle: ho mangiato ‘I ate’; sono andato ‘I went’. Some books call it the passato prossimo ‘perfect tense’.

We have used the term passato semplice ‘simple past’ to denote the past tense that is simple, not compound, e.g. andai ‘I went’ (as opposed to sono andato ‘I went’). Most books call this tense passato remoto, English ‘past definite’, ‘past historic’ or ‘past absolute’.

(verb forms) A passive construction is a sentence in which the subject of the sentence is the person or thing affected by the action or event taking place (as opposed to an active construction where the subject is the person carrying out the action): tutti gli studenti sono stati promossi ‘all the students were moved up a class’; il concerto è stato anticipato ‘the concert was put forward’.

The verb subject can be a first person (io ‘I’), second person (tu ‘you’) third person (lui, lei ‘he, she’) and so on. Most verbs have three singular persons (English ‘I, you, he/she’) and three plural (English ‘we, you, they’).

Personal pronouns can be: subject pronouns io, tu, lui ‘I, you, he’, etc.; direct object pronouns mi, ti, lo, la ‘me, you, him, her’, etc.; indirect object pronouns mi, ti, gli, le ‘to me, to you, to him, to her’, etc.; disjunctive pronouns, used as stressed direct object or after a preposition (con) me, te, lui, lei ‘(with) me, you, him, her’, etc.

Possessive adjectives and/or pronouns denote ownership: il mio orologio ‘my watch’; la nostra macchina ‘our car’.

A word that gives further information about a person, action or event, for example, about time, place, value or purpose: ci siamo sposati nel 1975 ‘we got married in 1975’; sono nata a Milano ‘I was born in Milan’; una macchina da caffè ‘a coffee machine’; un francobollo da 2 euro ‘a two euro stamp’; siamo venuti per imparare l’italiano ‘we came to learn Italian’.

A word that stands in for and/or refers to a noun. There are various categories of pronoun: demonstrative, such as hai visto quello? ‘have you seen that man’; indef- inite, such as alcuni ‘a few people’; interrogative, such as chi? ‘who?’; personal, such as io ‘I’, noi ‘ we, us’, lo ‘it’; possessive, such as il mio ‘my, mine’, i suoi ‘his, hers’ (m. pl. form); reflexive, such as mi, ti, si ‘myself, yourself, himself/herself’; relative, such as quello che ‘the one who’.

Direct questions sometimes use a question word (dove vai stasera? ‘where are you going this evening?’) and sometimes they do not (hai tempo di parlarmi? ‘do you have time to speak to me?’). Indirect questions are introduced by words such as chiedere ‘to ask’: mi ha chiesto se avevo tempo di parlargli ‘he asked me if I had time to speak to him’.

A reflexive verb is a verb that can be used with a reflexive pronoun (the equivalent of English ‘myself, himself’) indicating that the subject and the object are one and the same: mi lavo ‘I wash’; si è fatto male ‘he hurt himself’. Sometimes the verb can only be used reflexively, and no object is actually present: molte volte i drogati si vergognano di quello che fanno ‘often drug addicts are ashamed of what they do’.

A regular noun or verb is one that follows one of the main noun or verb patterns, in other words one whose forms and endings can be predicted, for example: -are, parlare ‘to speak’; -ere, sorridere ‘to smile’; -ire, partire ‘to leave’.

A relative pronoun introduces a relative clause, i.e. a clause that gives more informa- tion about a person or thing specifically mentioned, or even an event referred to: ho visto la studentessa che veniva sempre nel mio ufficio ‘I saw the student who was always coming to my office’; è andato alla discoteca senza chiedere il permesso, ciò che mi ha fatto arrabbiare ‘he went to the disco without asking permission, which made me angry’.

This is also known as indirect speech and is a way of relating words spoken or written by someone else. Reported speech is usually introduced by verbs such as dire ‘to say, to tell’, scrivere ‘to write’, annunciare ‘to announce’, and the conjunc- tion che: i giornali annunciano che i soldati hanno massacrato migliaia di bambini ‘the newspapers say that the soldiers have massacred thousands of children’.

A sentence must have a verb and a subject. It can either be a simple sentence (one subject, one verb), e.g. gli ospiti dormivano ‘the guests were asleep’, or a complex sentence (main clause plus one or more subordinate clauses), e.g. mentre dormivano, i ladri hanno portato via tutto ‘while they were asleep, the thieves took everything’

Those that are formed of one word only. See also Compound tenses.

The subject is usually a noun, pronoun or proper name denoting the person or object performing the action or the event taking place: mia madre ha comprato un tailleur ‘my mother bought a suit’; la festa si svolge a maggio ‘the festival takes place in May’. In the case of a passive construction, the subject is the person or thing affected by the action: gli studenti sono stati criticati dagli insegnanti ‘the students were criticised by their teachers’. With Italian verbs, it is not always essential to have a subject mentioned since it is understood from the verb form, e.g. abbiamo mangiato a mezzogiorno ‘we ate at midday’.

The subjunctive mood is used to express doubt or uncertainty. It is almost always used in complex sentences where one clause depends on another (e.g. abbiamo comprato un cagnolino in modo che i bambini imparino a prendere cura degli animali ‘we bought a puppy so that the children can learn how to look after animals’), or where the subordinate clause depends on a main verb expressing uncertainty (dubito che lui possa farcela ‘I doubt if he can manage it’). However it can be found standing on its own, when used as an imperative form: vada via! ‘go away!’

A subordinate clause is one that depends on another clause, usually the main clause in a sentence. It can be introduced by a conjunction such as che ‘what’ or perché ‘because’, or a relative pronoun such as che ‘who, which’. See Clauses.

(See also Comparative.) When one or more people, objects or activities are compared with others, or a comparison is implied, a superlative form is used to express the one that is superior to all the rest: la casa della mia amica Matilde era la più grande del paese ‘my friend Matilde’s house was the biggest in the village’; abbiamo fatto il meglio possibile ‘we did as well as we could’.

A finite verb form that normally provides a clue as to the time setting (present, past, future) for an action or event: andremo a New York ‘we will go to New York’; i miei amici ci sono stati ‘my friends have been there’. Occasionally the gram- matical verb tense does not correspond to the time setting – for example the future can be used for a present time setting: Sono le 4.00. Mio marito sarà già a Palermo ‘It’s 4.00. My husband will be at Palermo by now’ – and the imperfect can be used to express a polite request: volevo un francobollo da 2 euro ‘I wanted a 2 euro stamp’.

Transitive verbs are verbs that can always be used transitively, in other words with a direct object: ho fumato una sigaretta ‘I smoked a cigarette’. Sometimes no object is used ho fumato ‘I smoked’, but the verb is still a transitive verb because it can, and often does, take an object. Some verbs can be used both transitively and intran- sitively, e.g. aumentare ‘to increase’, diminuire ‘to decrease’, cambiare ‘to change’: abbiamo aumentato il prezzo del biglietto ‘we have increased the price of the ticket’; il prezzo del biglietto è aumentato ‘the price of the ticket has increased’.

A verb describes an action, event or state. It always has a subject and can also have an object. Its form varies according to mood and tense, and the person, gender and number of its subject.

The stem of a verb is its ‘base’, the part of the verb left when you take away -are, -ere-, -ire from the infinitive form. In a regular verb the ending changes but the stem does not usually change. In an irregular verb, the stem may change too.

Verbs normally have two voices: active and passive.

The main function of nouns in any language is to denote an entity (person, object, etc.) or concept (situation, abstract idea, etc.).

Nouns are generally used together with articles (the, a) and/or adjectives (describing physical or other characteristics), which provide information about the entity or concept.

Nouns, Adjectives and Articles together form a group of words called the noun group; two examples are shown below:

una (article) grande (adjective) casa (noun) a big house

la (article) ragazza (noun) inglese (adjective) the English girl

Although the noun group may contain other elements (e.g. adverbs, prepositional phrases, etc.), in this chapter we will only deal with the three basic elements of noun/ article/adjective, analysing them one by one.

In Italian the three components of the noun group can be considered not only separately but also as a ‘whole’, in which the various components have to ‘agree’, so we will also look at how they are used together.

The noun is the focus of the noun group, and in fact the article and adjectives always agree with the noun in gender (masculine or feminine) and number (singular or plural).

The two grammatical features of gender and number determine the form of noun, article and adjective.

All Italian nouns have either a masculine or a feminine gender

Gender is a purely grammatical term.

Nouns referring to human beings or animals sometimes have the same grammatical gender as their natural gender, but not always (see below).

speakers of other languages often find it difficult to remember the gender of nouns and this creates a problem when it comes to making the other components of the noun group ‘agree’ with the noun.

With non-animate objects, there is not always an obvious explanation for their gender.

Non-Italian speakers either have to learn and memorise the genders of words or consult a dictionary.

Italian dictionaries usually indicate the gender of nouns with abbreviations such as s.m. (sostantivo maschile) and s.f. (sostantivo femminile).

Italian does not always have a male and a female of each animal species

Some animals – as in English – have two distinct names for the male and the female of the species:

un cane dog una cagna bitch

un gallo cock una gallina hen

Some, but not all, professional and other titles may have a distinct form for the feminine. Nouns whose masculine form ends in -e have a feminine form ending either in -a or in -essa:

cameriere cameriera waiter/waitress
infermiere infermiera nurse
padrone padrona master/mistress
studente studentessa student
presidente presidentessa president
principe principessa prince/princess
conte contessa count/countess
barone baronessa baron/baroness

baroness Most nouns with masculine form ending in -tore have a feminine form ending in -trice:
ambasciatore ambasciatrice ambassador

attore attrice actor/actress

autore autrice author direttore

direttrice director, manager

imperatore imperatrice emperor/empress

pittore pittrice painter

scultore scultrice sculptor

scrittore scrittrice writer

senatore senatrice senator

Number Unlike gender, the grammatical concept of singular or plural (‘number’) causes no problem for speakers of English. Occasionally (as in English) a singular noun is used to refer to a collective entity that one might expect to be grammatically plural, e.g. la gente ‘people’. On the other hand, some objects that are singular in English may be plural in Italian, e.g. le lasagne ‘lasagne’ or i capelli ‘hair’.

Some objects that are singular in English may be plural in Italian, e.g. le lasagne ‘lasagne’ or i capelli ‘hair’.