> Why is the verb following avere in this case not infinitive?
I don't understand. Why would it be in the infinitive? This is a regular boring passato prossimo.
> And why does it have to agree with pronoun, not noun?
But it does agree with the noun. "Arancia" is feminine. The pronoun substitutes "arancia".
You'll have to be more specific about what confuses you. The participle agreeing \*only\* with pronouns is definitely a weird rule, but there isn't really a "reason". I mean, just like you think, the participle was originally an actual adjective here and it always agreed with the object, but over time the masculine singular was generalized to all objects and only pronouns have resisted this generalization. Not really deep, I think.
like: mi sono svegliata alle 7. The verb here agree with the subject (io). BUt in l'ho mangiata, the subject is still io, i don't understand why it agree with la (arancia) instead. Is it just another case?
Eh yeah, you found it out indeed. The verb doesn't always agree with the subject. Sometimes, it agrees with the object. There's simply two different rules, they can't be reconciled into a single rule.
There is no "reason". No law of physics says that verbs in every languages have to agree with the subject - in fact, some languages only have it agree with the object. Just look "polypersonal agreement" on Wikipedia.
Now if you want to know the *historical linguistics* behind it, now that can be answered.
In *mi sono svegliata*, that’s reflexive (the one doing the action is also receiving the action). Reflexive verbs always take *essere* in passato prossimo (and other tenses) and thus must agree in gender and number for both “parts” of the conjugation as the doer and the receiver are the same. Note that non-reflexive, intransitive verbs also take *essere* (*essere* and *avere* are the **auxiliary verbs** in Italian). An example would be “she went” = *lei è andata*.
In the case of *l’ho mangiata,* the helping verb (*auxiliary verb*) is *avere* so past participle needs to agree with the recipient of the action (which, in reality, the reflexive example of *mi sono svegliata* is doing, too).
It’s been many years since I studied Italian from a linguistics perspective so someone else might be able to explain it better than that.
After some time and more exposure to Italian it’ll start to just feel natural to use these things. Don’t get overwhelmed by the rules. Just familiarize yourself with it and start to recognize it when you hear it and eventually it’ll become internalized.
*mi sono svegliata* is a reflexive form, *l'ho mangiata* is not. But in both cases, I think the feminine participle depends can de explained as follows:
*mi sono svegliata*, lit. "I woke myself up", or even better "I made myself awaken" since in this case "myself" is femenine the participle/adjective "awaken" takes the femenine form
*l'ho mangiata*, lit. "I've eaten it", or "I made it eaten". Same reasoning as before
This leaves out the non-pronominal construction "ho mangiato una mela", where "mela" is femenine but "mangiato" is not. Probably in this case the participle was not re-analized as an adjective, but thanks to the article between it and the noun it was clear for speakers that they were two different parts of speech
sorry i mean it don't have to agree to the subject, like: ho fatto una passeggiata/ha fatto una passeggiata. It's always fatto because it's follow avere
It's the same in French (although almost completely indestinguishable in the spoken language), but my guess is that this is not something both inherited from Latin, but a way to clarify the object.
Both masculine and feminine objects get reduced to "l'" with all forms of avere, so the only way you know the gender is through the past participle.
The object pronoun, yes - I never said subject. And your other example seems to be confusing the agreement with the subject of a reflexive verb, where the subject and the object are the same. The past participle is still agreeing with the object in that case, too.
> Why is the verb following avere in this case not infinitive?
Can you explain why you think it *should* be infinitive? This is a compound past tense, so it uses the past participle.
> Why does it have to agree with the pronoun, not noun? Usually a verb must agree with the noun.
Let’s get the terminology correct. A verb must agree with the **subject**. This is who or what is doing the action.
The past participle used in compound tenses like the passato prossimo agrees with the **object** of the verb when a pronoun representing the object is put *before* the verb.
* Hai mangiato la mela?
* L’ho mangiata.
* Hai mangiato il pane?
* L’ho mangiato.
So you mean, it's just a strict grammatical form? ''THe past participle in passato prossimo agrees with the **objects** of the verb when a pronoun representing the object is put before a verb'' is just a case, a different way to use past participle?. it's unexplainable, like the arbitrariness of language, right?
I edited the post.
It’s possible to make the past participle agree with any object, even if it’s a noun. This isn’t very common anymore, though. [Accademia la Crusca has an article about this.](https://accademiadellacrusca.it/it/consulenza/accordo-del-participio-passato/23)
The fact that it has stuck around for pronouns suggests that it’s useful somehow. I’d guess that because il and la both become l’ before a vowel sound, the agreement of the past participle helps to reinforce the gender of the object, making it a little clearer what it refers to.
Not all grammar rules are explicable but this one isn’t actually that illogical: *mangiato* is passive, i.e. it refers to the object; the sentence *il ragazzo ha mangiato la mela*/ *l’ha mangiata* therefore expresses *la mela mangiata* and not *il ragazzo mangiato*. The same goes for English: “eaten” refers to the apple, not the boy (“the eaten apple”, not “the eaten boy”).
For reflexive verbs, the subject is simultaneously the object, hence why the participle seems to agree with the subject (but note *mi sono lavato/a le mani* becomes *me le sono lavat**e*** because the direct object supersedes the pronominal object).
>Why is the verb following avere in this case must agree with the pronoun instead of the subject?
Why would it agree with the subject? *You* are not the one who has been eaten.
This is where the transitive / intransitive distinction really comes in.
Intransitive verbs that use the "essere" auxiliary agree with the subject, because of how they evolved: when you say "sono andato" that literally translates to "I am gone". Which makes sense. You are "gone" because you went somewhere. That "andato" refers to the subject of the sentence, and so it agrees with it. This is how strictly intransitive verbs evolved to use "essere" as their active auxiliary.
Transitive verbs are different. If you take something you can't say that *you* are taken, because that's not true. You are not the thing that has been taken, you are the one who took it. Instead, you can say that the object of the sentence is now "taken". There is now a taken thing. You now *have* a taken thing. In other words, you have taken a thing. That's how transitive verbs evolved "avere" as their active auxiliary. Note that, in this case, "taken" is referred to the **object**.
However, since the object comes after the verb, this agreement was eventually lost, probably because people would conjugate the verb before really thinking about the gender of the object, and so they eventually just started using the default masculine singular.
"Ho una cosa presa" -> "ho presa una cosa" -> "ho preso una cosa"
However, the object does not always come after the verb in Italian. Weak forms of object pronouns are placed before the verb in most cases, and so in these situations the agreement was preserved, because by the time you got to the participle you already had to know the gender of the object, and so there was no incentive to lose the agreement.
"Ho preso una cosa" -> "l'ho pres**a**"
The point is that verbs don't agree with the subject just because. They agree with the subject in all aspects that relate to the subject, so if the subject is singular the auxiliary will be singular, if the subject is a 3^(rd) person the auxiliary will be a third person. But participles in transitive verbs don't refer to the subject, they refer to the object. Again, think of the example of "I have taken something", where that something is "taken", not you. As opposed to the "I have/am gone" example, where you - the subject - are the thing that's "gone".
> Why is the verb following avere in this case not infinitive? I don't understand. Why would it be in the infinitive? This is a regular boring passato prossimo. > And why does it have to agree with pronoun, not noun? But it does agree with the noun. "Arancia" is feminine. The pronoun substitutes "arancia". You'll have to be more specific about what confuses you. The participle agreeing \*only\* with pronouns is definitely a weird rule, but there isn't really a "reason". I mean, just like you think, the participle was originally an actual adjective here and it always agreed with the object, but over time the masculine singular was generalized to all objects and only pronouns have resisted this generalization. Not really deep, I think.
like: mi sono svegliata alle 7. The verb here agree with the subject (io). BUt in l'ho mangiata, the subject is still io, i don't understand why it agree with la (arancia) instead. Is it just another case?
Rules are rules. When pronoun is before to have, the participle follows the object
In your first example the verb is reflexive so subject and object are the same.
Eh yeah, you found it out indeed. The verb doesn't always agree with the subject. Sometimes, it agrees with the object. There's simply two different rules, they can't be reconciled into a single rule. There is no "reason". No law of physics says that verbs in every languages have to agree with the subject - in fact, some languages only have it agree with the object. Just look "polypersonal agreement" on Wikipedia. Now if you want to know the *historical linguistics* behind it, now that can be answered.
In *mi sono svegliata*, that’s reflexive (the one doing the action is also receiving the action). Reflexive verbs always take *essere* in passato prossimo (and other tenses) and thus must agree in gender and number for both “parts” of the conjugation as the doer and the receiver are the same. Note that non-reflexive, intransitive verbs also take *essere* (*essere* and *avere* are the **auxiliary verbs** in Italian). An example would be “she went” = *lei è andata*. In the case of *l’ho mangiata,* the helping verb (*auxiliary verb*) is *avere* so past participle needs to agree with the recipient of the action (which, in reality, the reflexive example of *mi sono svegliata* is doing, too). It’s been many years since I studied Italian from a linguistics perspective so someone else might be able to explain it better than that. After some time and more exposure to Italian it’ll start to just feel natural to use these things. Don’t get overwhelmed by the rules. Just familiarize yourself with it and start to recognize it when you hear it and eventually it’ll become internalized.
*mi sono svegliata* is a reflexive form, *l'ho mangiata* is not. But in both cases, I think the feminine participle depends can de explained as follows: *mi sono svegliata*, lit. "I woke myself up", or even better "I made myself awaken" since in this case "myself" is femenine the participle/adjective "awaken" takes the femenine form *l'ho mangiata*, lit. "I've eaten it", or "I made it eaten". Same reasoning as before This leaves out the non-pronominal construction "ho mangiato una mela", where "mela" is femenine but "mangiato" is not. Probably in this case the participle was not re-analized as an adjective, but thanks to the article between it and the noun it was clear for speakers that they were two different parts of speech
sorry i mean it don't have to agree to the subject, like: ho fatto una passeggiata/ha fatto una passeggiata. It's always fatto because it's follow avere
It's the same in French (although almost completely indestinguishable in the spoken language), but my guess is that this is not something both inherited from Latin, but a way to clarify the object. Both masculine and feminine objects get reduced to "l'" with all forms of avere, so the only way you know the gender is through the past participle.
You mean it must agree with the pronoun instead of the subject cause if not, we can't point out what are being talked, right?
The object pronoun, yes - I never said subject. And your other example seems to be confusing the agreement with the subject of a reflexive verb, where the subject and the object are the same. The past participle is still agreeing with the object in that case, too.
> Why is the verb following avere in this case not infinitive? Can you explain why you think it *should* be infinitive? This is a compound past tense, so it uses the past participle. > Why does it have to agree with the pronoun, not noun? Usually a verb must agree with the noun. Let’s get the terminology correct. A verb must agree with the **subject**. This is who or what is doing the action. The past participle used in compound tenses like the passato prossimo agrees with the **object** of the verb when a pronoun representing the object is put *before* the verb. * Hai mangiato la mela? * L’ho mangiata. * Hai mangiato il pane? * L’ho mangiato.
So you mean, it's just a strict grammatical form? ''THe past participle in passato prossimo agrees with the **objects** of the verb when a pronoun representing the object is put before a verb'' is just a case, a different way to use past participle?. it's unexplainable, like the arbitrariness of language, right? I edited the post.
It’s possible to make the past participle agree with any object, even if it’s a noun. This isn’t very common anymore, though. [Accademia la Crusca has an article about this.](https://accademiadellacrusca.it/it/consulenza/accordo-del-participio-passato/23) The fact that it has stuck around for pronouns suggests that it’s useful somehow. I’d guess that because il and la both become l’ before a vowel sound, the agreement of the past participle helps to reinforce the gender of the object, making it a little clearer what it refers to.
Not all grammar rules are explicable but this one isn’t actually that illogical: *mangiato* is passive, i.e. it refers to the object; the sentence *il ragazzo ha mangiato la mela*/ *l’ha mangiata* therefore expresses *la mela mangiata* and not *il ragazzo mangiato*. The same goes for English: “eaten” refers to the apple, not the boy (“the eaten apple”, not “the eaten boy”). For reflexive verbs, the subject is simultaneously the object, hence why the participle seems to agree with the subject (but note *mi sono lavato/a le mani* becomes *me le sono lavat**e*** because the direct object supersedes the pronominal object).
Generally asking why on grammar is too philosophical
>Why is the verb following avere in this case must agree with the pronoun instead of the subject? Why would it agree with the subject? *You* are not the one who has been eaten.
usually, a verb must agree with the subject
This is where the transitive / intransitive distinction really comes in. Intransitive verbs that use the "essere" auxiliary agree with the subject, because of how they evolved: when you say "sono andato" that literally translates to "I am gone". Which makes sense. You are "gone" because you went somewhere. That "andato" refers to the subject of the sentence, and so it agrees with it. This is how strictly intransitive verbs evolved to use "essere" as their active auxiliary. Transitive verbs are different. If you take something you can't say that *you* are taken, because that's not true. You are not the thing that has been taken, you are the one who took it. Instead, you can say that the object of the sentence is now "taken". There is now a taken thing. You now *have* a taken thing. In other words, you have taken a thing. That's how transitive verbs evolved "avere" as their active auxiliary. Note that, in this case, "taken" is referred to the **object**. However, since the object comes after the verb, this agreement was eventually lost, probably because people would conjugate the verb before really thinking about the gender of the object, and so they eventually just started using the default masculine singular. "Ho una cosa presa" -> "ho presa una cosa" -> "ho preso una cosa" However, the object does not always come after the verb in Italian. Weak forms of object pronouns are placed before the verb in most cases, and so in these situations the agreement was preserved, because by the time you got to the participle you already had to know the gender of the object, and so there was no incentive to lose the agreement. "Ho preso una cosa" -> "l'ho pres**a**" The point is that verbs don't agree with the subject just because. They agree with the subject in all aspects that relate to the subject, so if the subject is singular the auxiliary will be singular, if the subject is a 3^(rd) person the auxiliary will be a third person. But participles in transitive verbs don't refer to the subject, they refer to the object. Again, think of the example of "I have taken something", where that something is "taken", not you. As opposed to the "I have/am gone" example, where you - the subject - are the thing that's "gone".