Italian grammar

src: unilang.org

Italian grammar is the body of rules describing the properties of the Italian language. Italian words can be divided into the following lexical categories: articles, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.

Video Italian grammar

Articles

Italian articles vary according to definiteness (definite, indefinite, and partitive), number, gender, and the initial sound of the subsequent word. Partitive articles compound the preposition di with the corresponding definite article, to express uncertain quantity. In the plural, they typically translate into English as "few"; in the singular, typically as "some".

Maps Italian grammar

Inflection of nouns and adjectives

Nouns and adjectives generally inflect by gender (masculine and feminine, with only some instances of vestigial neuter) and number (singular and plural). Inflection patterns are similar for the two categories:

In the last two examples, only the article carries information about gender and number.

Most masculine words that end in -io pronounced as /jo/ simply drop the -o and thus end in just -i in the plural: vecchio / vecchi ("old"), funzionario / funzionari ("functionary(-ies)"), esempio / esempi ("example(s)"), etc.

The Italian hard and soft C and G phenomenon leads to a few spelling/pronunciation peculiarities in certain cases:

• Words in -cio and -gio form plurals in -ci and -gi, e.g. bacio / baci ("kiss(es)")
• Words in -cia and -gia have been a point of contention; according to a commonly employed rule, they:
  • form plurals in -cie and -gie if the final letter before the suffix is a vowel: camicia, camicie ("shirt(s)"); ciliegia, ciliegie ("cherry"/"cherries").
  • form plurals in -ce and -ge if the final letter before the suffix is a consonant: frangia, frange ("fringe(s)"); faccia, facce ("face(s)").
  • when the i is stressed, it always remains in plural: farmacia / farmacie ("chemist's shop(s)"), nevralgia / nevralgie ("neuralgia(s)").
• Words in -co and -go behave quite irregularly: "the grammarians are skeptical of any attempt at giving a ruling about this area". There are only partial, empirical rules of thumb:
  • plurals are formed with -chi and -ghi if the last letter before the suffix is a consonant or a stressed vowel: fungo / funghi ("mushroom(s)"), stecco / stecchi ("stick(s)"), mago / maghi ("magician(s)"), fuoco / fuochi ("fire(s)")
  • plurals are formed with -ci and -gi if the last letter before the suffix is an unstressed vowel: comico / comici ("comedian(s)"), medico / medici ("physician(s)")
  • in words ending with -logo suffix, the plural is usually in -gi when -logo means "expert" or "student", corresponding to English -logist (e.g. archeologo / archeologi, "archaeologist(s)"), while it is in -ghi when it means "speech" or "reasoning", corresponding often to English -logue/-log (e.g. catalogo / cataloghi, "catalogue(s)").
  • there are exceptions such as amico / amici ("friend(s)"), greco / greci ("Greek(s)"), valico / valichi ("mountain pass(es)"), carico / carichi ("cargo(s)").

Although as in most Romance languages, the neuter gender has been lost in Italian, the neuter function has been absorbed into the masculine; masculine pronouns and adjectives are used to refer to and describe unspecified neuter things such as facts and ideas (e.g. Lo so ("I know it"), where lo is the masculine third-person singular unstressed direct object pronoun).

Nouns

Most nouns are derived from Latin, from Greek or from a Latinization of foreign words:

Any other noun, both those from Latin with an unusual ending and those derived from languages other than Latin or Greek, and not Latinized (cifra - meaning "digit" - and ragazzo/ragazza - meaning "boy/girl" - are from Hebrew and Arabic respectively, but they are Latinized), and nouns ending with a stressed vowel are not inflected; thus:

• il re / i re ("the king(s)": rex / reges)
• il caffè / i caffè ("the coffee(s)")
• il film / i film ("the film(s)")

There are certain words (neuter in Latin) that are masculine in the singular and feminine or masculine in the plural:

• il braccio / le braccia or i bracci ("the arm(s)")
• l'uovo / le uova ("the egg(s)")
• il ginocchio / le ginocchia or i ginocchi ("the knee(s)")
• il sopracciglio / le sopracciglia or i sopraccigli ("the eyebrow(s)")

These nouns' endings derive regularly from the Latin neuter endings of the second declension (sg. -um / pl. -a), but there are some from the third declension as well: e.g. il gregge / le greggi (flock(s), but i greggi works, too); the tradition of calling them "irregular" or "mobile gender" (genere mobile) would come from the paradigm that there are so few nouns of this kind that the existence of neuter can be considered vestigial. The choice of plural is sometimes left to the user, while in some cases there are differences of meaning:

• Sometimes, for body parts, the feminine/neuter plural denotes the literal meaning while the masculine one denotes a figurative meaning: il braccio ("the arm") / le braccia ("the arms") / i bracci ("the isthmuses", "the inlets"); il corno ("the horn") / le corna ("the horns" of an animal) / i corni ("the horns" as musical instruments)
• Sometimes, especially in poetic and old-fashioned Italian, the masculine plural acts as a count noun, while the neuter/feminine plural acts as a mass noun: il cervello ("the brain") / due cervelli ("two brains") / le cervella ("the cerebral matter"); l'anello ("the ring") / due anelli ("two rings") / le anella ("ringlets"); furthermore, il dito ("the finger") / le dita ("the fingers") and also due dita ("two fingers") / but i diti indici ("the index fingers")

Irregular plurals

There are very few true irregular plurals in Italian (plurali irregolari). Some of them are:

• l'uomo / gli uomini (man/men; Latin homo / homines )
• il dio / gli dei (god(s); note also the irregularity in the article: gli instead of i)
• il bue / i buoi (ox(en); Latin bos / boves)
• il tempio / i templi (temple(s); Latin templum / templa)
• il carcere / le carceri (prison (masculine) / prisons (feminine))
• l'ala / le ali (wing(s); but l'ale is acceptable in poetry)
• l'arma / le armi (weapon(s); but l'arme is acceptable in poetry)
• la mano / le mani (hand(s))
• l'eco / gli echi (echo (feminine) / echoes (masculine))

Alteration

In Italian, altered nouns are nouns with particular shades of meaning. They are divided into diminutives, "vezzeggiativi" (diminutives with kindness and sympathy nuance), augmentatives and pejoratives.

Many other alterations can be built, sometimes with more than one suffix: for example, libro (book) can become libretto (diminutive), libricino (double diminutive), libercolo (diminutive + pejorative), libraccio (pejorative), libraccione (pejorative + augmentative). Uomo (man), coming from Latin homo, becomes om- in altered forms: omino (diminutive), omone (augmentative), omaccio (pejorative), omaccione (augmentative + pejorative).

Adjectives

In Italian, an adjective can be placed before or after the noun. The unmarked placement for most adjectives (e.g. colours, nationalities) is after the noun, but this is reversed for a few common classes of adjective -- those denoting beauty, age, goodness, and size are placed before the noun in the unmarked case, and after the noun for emphasis.

Placing the adjective after the noun can alter its meaning or indicate restrictiveness of reference. If a noun has many adjectives, usually no more than one will be before the noun.

• un libro rosso = a red book (the unmarked case)
• un rosso libro = a book that is red (the marked case; it is especially important to the intended meaning that the book is *red*, as opposed to some other color)
• un buon uomo = a good man (the unmarked case)
• un uomo buono = a man who is good (the marked case; it is especially important to the intended meaning that he is good, the adjective is emphasized)

Adjectives are inflected for gender and number:

Degrees of comparison

Italian has three degrees of comparison: comparative, relative superlative and absolute superlative.

The comparative and relative superlative are formed with più ("more", "most"); for instance:

• sono più alto di te ("I am taller than you")
• sono il più alto fra gli uomini ("I am the tallest of men")

Vice versa, inverting the order of the words, it's required to replace più with meno ("less, fewer"); for instance:

• sono il meno forte del campionato ("I am the least strong of the championship")
• tu sei meno alto di me ("You are less tall than me")

Another comparative form is made with the word come ('as', 'like'); for instance:

• sono alto come te ("I am as tall as you")

The absolute comparative is formed by placing troppo ("too") before the adjective; for instance:

• sei troppo buono ("you are too good").

The absolute superlative, derived from the Latin synthetic superlative in -issimus, is formed by adding -issimo to an adjective: intelligente ("intelligent"), intelligentissimo ("very intelligent"); sporco ("dirty") sporchissimo ("very dirty"). If the two letters before the last vowel are pr or br (e.g., aspro, celebre), the r is removed and -errimo is the suffix used (asperrimo, celeberrimo) ("very sour", "very famous"). Another way to form the absolute superlative is to place either molto or assai ("very") before the adjective. For instance sporchissimo and molto sporco ("very dirty") are the same, although the form ending in issimo is usually perceived as more emphatic; that is, sporchissimo is dirtier than molto sporco.

Some adjectives have irregular comparatives (though with regularly-formed variants also in common use), like

• buono ("good"), migliore / più buono ("better" or "best"), migliore / ottimo / buonissimo ("very good")
• cattivo ("bad"), peggiore / più cattivo ("worse" or "worst"), pessimo / cattivissimo ("very bad")
• grande ("big"), maggiore / più grande ("bigger"), massimo / grandissimo ("very big")
• piccolo ("small"), minore / più piccolo ("smaller"), minimo / piccolissimo ("very small")

Possessive adjectives

With the exception of 3rd person plural loro 'their', possessive adjectives, like articles, must agree with the gender and number of the noun they modify. Hence, mio zio (my uncle), but mia zia (my aunt). So depending on what is being modified, the possessive adjectives are:

In most cases the possessive adjective is used with an article, usually the definite article:

And sometimes with the indefinite article:

The only exception is when the possessive refers to an individual family member (unless the family member is described or characterized in some way):

Mamma and papà (or babbo, in Central Italy; "mother" and "father"), however, are usually used with the article.

For emphasis, however, possessive adjectives are sometimes placed after the noun. This is usually after words like 'colpa' (fault, sin); 'casa' (house, home); 'merito' (merit); 'piacere' (pleasure); or in vocative expressions.

If the antecedent of a third person possessive (being used as an object) is the subject of the sentence, proprio can be used instead of suo, though the usage of proprio is declining in the spoken language:

The first sentence is unambiguous and states that Marco took his own point of view, whereas the second sentence is ambiguous because it may mean that Marco took either his own or Maria's point of view.

Demonstrative adjectives

Italian originally had three degrees of demonstrative adjectives: questo (for items near or related to the first person speaker: English "this"), quello (for items near or related to an eventual third person: English "that"), and codesto (for items near or related to an eventual second person). The usage has undergone a simplification, including the meaning of codesto in quello, and only Tuscan speakers still use codesto. Its use is very rare in modern language, and the word has acquired a rather pejorative connotation.

Pronouns

Italian features a sizeable set of pronouns. Personal pronouns are inflected for person, number, case, and, in the third person, gender. Literary subject pronouns also have a distinction between animate (egli, ella) and inanimate (esso, essa) antecedents, although this is lost in colloquial usage, where lui, lei and loro are used for animate subjects as well as objects, while no specific pronoun is employed for inanimate subjects (if needed, demonstrative pronouns such as "questo" or "quello" may be used). There is also the uninflected pronoun ciò, which is only used with abstract antecedents.

Personal pronouns are normally dropped in the subject, as the conjugation is usually enough to determine the grammatical person. They are used when some emphasis is needed, e.g. sono italiano ("I am Italian") vs. io sono italiano ("I [specifically, as opposed to others] am Italian").

Notes:

Clitic pronouns

Though objects come after the verb as a rule, this is often not the case with a class of unstressed, clitic pro-forms.

Clitic pronouns generally come before the verb, but in certain types of constructions, such as lo devo fare, they can also appear as enclitics (attached to the verb itself) - in this case, devo farlo. In the gerund and the imperative mood clitic pronouns must always be used as enclitics (as in confessalo! and ricordandolo).

Other examples:

(Compare with the similar use of objective pronouns and pro-forms in French and Catalan.)

Finally, in the imperative mood, the objective pronouns come once again after the verb, but this time as a suffix:

• Stressed forms of all four non-subject cases are used when emphasized (e.g. uccidi me, non lui ("kill me, not him"), dallo a lei ("give it to her"), lo farò con lui ("I'll do it with that"), etc.).
• In colloquial speech, form I. of the dative (mi, ti, gli, le, si, ci, vi) is often associated with the emphasized form of the dative (a me, a te, a lui, a lei, a sé, a noi, a voi, a loro) in such a way: a me mi danno un libro ("they give me a book"), a loro gli hanno venduto una casa ("they sold them a house"). Though widely used, this redundant usage is considered non-standard.

Combinations of clitics

In Italian it is possible to append more than one clitic to a single verb. In normal usage, two is the usual limit, although clusters of three can occasionally arise for some speakers (e.g. ci se la sente = "One feels up to it"). Any two cases can be used together, except for accusative + genitive, and word order is strictly determined according to one of the following two patterns:

1. When one clitic is third-person non-reflexive accusative or genitive, form II. of the other clitic is generally used. Thus:

   For example:

   • Ve lo dico già da ora: io non verrò! = "I already told you [pl.] (said it to you): I'm not coming!" (accusative + dative)
   • Ce li ha già dati = "He/she/you already gave them to us" (accusative + dative)
   • Ecco l'uomo di cui mi innamorai! Te ne ho portato la foto! = "Here's the man I fell in love with! I brought the picture (of him to you)!" (dative + genitive)
   • Vedresti Carla con una gonna lunga e un cappello? - Sì, ce la vedrei = "Could you imagine Carla with a long skirt and a hat? - Yes, I could imagine her with that" (accusative + instrumental)
   • Riuscirai a trasportare abbastanza mele con quel piccolo furgoncino? - Uomo di poca fede! Ce ne trasporterò quintali! = "Will you be able to transport enough apples with such a small van? - Man of little faith! I'll transport quintals of them (with it)!" (instrumental + genitive)
2. Otherwise, form I. is used:

   Thus:

   • Mi ti mostro senza veli = "I'm showing myself to you without veils" (accusative + dative)
   • Ti si fece incontro = "He/she approached you (moved himself/herself to you)" (accusative + dative)
   • [G]li ti darò nelle mani, perché in pezzi ti faccia come tu meriti = "I will deliver you to him, so that he will tear you to pieces as you deserve" (accusative + dative)
   • Marco ha vinto! Che farà con tutti quei soldi? - Ci si pagherà l'Università = "Marco won! What's he going to do with all that money? - He'll pay for college (for himself with it)" (dative + instrumental)
   • Papà, hai vinto! Che farai con tutti quei soldi? - Ti ci pagherò l'Università = "Dad, you won! What are you going to do with all that money? - I'll pay for college for you (with it)" (dative + instrumental)
   • Metti via quella pistola! Ti ci ammazzi! = "Put away that pistol! You'll use it to kill yourself (kill yourself with it)!" (accusative + instrumental)

T-V distinction

Italian makes use of the T-V distinction in second-person address. The second-person nominative pronoun is tu for informal use, and for formal use, the third-person form Lei has been used since the Renaissance. It is used like "Sie" in German, "usted" in Spanish, and "você" in Portuguese. Lei was originally an object form of ella, which in turn referred to an honorific of the feminine gender such as la magnificenza tua/vostra ("Your Magnificence") or Vossignoria ("Your Lordship"), and by analogy, Loro came to be used as the formal plural. Previously, and in some Italian regions today (e.g. Campania), voi was used as the formal singular, like French "vous". The pronouns lei (third-person singular), Lei (formal second-person singular), loro (third-person plural), and Loro (formal second-person plural) are pronounced the same but written as shown, and formal Lei and Loro take third-person conjugations. Formal Lei is invariable for gender (always feminine), but adjectives that modify it are not: one would say to a man La conosco ("I know you") but Lei è alto ("You are tall"). Formal Loro is variable for gender: Li conosco ("I know you [masc. pl.]") vs. Le conosco ("I know you [fem. pl.]"), etc. The formal plural is very rarely used in modern Italian; the unmarked form is widely used instead. For example: Gino, Lei è un bravo ingegnere. Marco, Lei è un bravo architetto. Insieme, voi sarete una gran bella squadra ("Gino, you are a good engineer. Marco, you are a good architect. Together, you will make a very good team").

Verbs

Italian infiniti presenti may end in one of these three endings, either -are, -ere, or -ire. Exceptions are also possible fare "to do/make" (from Latin facere), and verbs ending in -urre or -arre, most notably tradurre (Latin traducere) "to translate". Italian grammar does not have distinct forms to indicate specifically verbal aspect, though different verbal inflections and periphrases do render different aspects, in particular the perfective and imperfective aspects and the perfect tense-aspect combination. While the various inflected verbal forms convey a combination of tense (location in time), aspect, and mood, language-specific discussions generally refer to these inflectional forms as "tempi", for this reason it is impossible to make comparisons between the tenses of English verbs and the tempi of Italian verbs as there is no correspondence at all.

Tenses

Simple tenses

Compound tenses

Impersonal forms

Aspects other than the imperfective and aorist (which are rendered by simple tenses) and perfect (which is rendered by compound tenses) are rendered in Italian through periphrastical forms that aren't recognized by canonical Italian grammar as proper tenses.

Examples

• Present tense, indicative mood, progressive aspect: io sto facendo (English: I'm doing)
• Present tense, indicative mood, prospective aspect: io sto per fare (English: I'm about to do)

Notes

Compound tense auxiliary verbs

In Italian, compound tenses are formed with either auxiliary verb essere ("to be") or avere ("to have").

All transitive verbs use avere as their auxiliary verb. Verbs in the passive voice use essere or venire, with different meanings:

• La porta è stata aperta. ("The door has been opened.")
• La porta viene aperta. ("The door is being opened.")

For intransitive verbs a reliable rule cannot be given, although a useful rule of thumb is that if a verb's past participle can take on adjectival value, essere is used, otherwise avere. Also, reflexive verbs and unaccusative verbs use essere (typically non-agentive verbs of motion and change of state, i.e. involuntary actions like cadere ("to fall") or morire ("to die")).

The distinction between the two auxiliary verbs is important for the correct formation of the compound tenses and is essential to the agreement of the past participle. Some verbs use can both, though, like vivere ("to live"): Io ho vissuto ("I have lived") can alternatively be expressed as, Io sono vissuto.

Past participle

The past participle is used in Italian as both an adjective and to form many of the compound tenses of the language. There are regular endings for the past participle, based on the conjugation class (see below). There are, however, many irregular forms as not all verbs follow the pattern, particularly the -ere verbs. Some of the more common irregular past participles include: essere (to be) -> stato (same for stare); fare (to do, to make) -> fatto; dire (to say, to tell) -> detto; aprire (to open) -> aperto; chiedere (to ask) -> chiesto; chiudere (to close) -> chiuso; leggere (to read) -> letto; mettere (to put) -> messo; perdere (to lose) -> perso; prendere (to take, to get) -> preso; rispondere (to answer) -> risposto; scrivere (to write) -> scritto; vedere (to see) -> visto.

For the intransitive verbs taking essere, the past participle always agrees with the subject--that is, it follows the usual adjective agreement rules: egli è partito; ella è partita. This is also true for reflexive verbs, the impersonal si construction (which, interestingly, requires any adjectives that refer to it to be in the masculine plural: Si è sempre stanchi alla fine della giornata - One is always tired at the end of the day), and the passive voice, which also use essere (Si è sparato - He shot himself, against Egli ha sparato - He shot).

The past participle when used with avere never changes to agree with the subject. It agrees with the object though, in sentences where a pronoun replacing the object precedes the verb (e.g. Hai mangiato la mela? - Sì, l'ho mangiata (Have you eaten the apple? - Yes, I have eaten it)).

When the pronoun is first or second person, there is optional agreement: Maria! Giovanni ti ha chiamato / chiamata? - No, non mi ha chiamato / chiamata (Maria! Has Giovanni called you? - No, he has not). In relative clauses, the agreement is obsolete: La storia che avete raccontata (obsolete) / raccontato non mi convince (The story you told does not convince me).

Tense relationship in subordinate sentences

Italian inherits consecutio temporum, a grammar rule from Latin that governs the relationship between the tenses in principal and subordinate clauses. Consecutio temporum has very rigid rules. These rules require the subjunctive tense in order to express contemporaneity, posteriority and anteriority in relation with the principal clause.

• To express contemporaneity when the principal clause is in a simple tense (future, present, or simple past,) the subordinate clause uses the present subjunctive, to express contemporaneity in the present.
  • Penso che Davide sia intelligente. I think David is smart.
• When the principal clause has a past imperfect or perfect, the subordinate clause uses the imperfect subjunctive, expressing contemporaneity in the past.
  • Pensavo che Davide fosse intelligente. I thought David was smart.
• To express anteriority when the principal clause is in a simple tense (future, or present or passato prossimo) the subordinate clause uses the past subjunctive.
  • Penso che Davide sia stato intelligente. I think David has been smart.
• To express anteriority when the principal clause has a past imperfect or perfect, the subjunctive has to be pluperfect.
  • Pensavo che Davide fosse stato intelligente. I thought David had been smart.
• To express posteriority the subordinate clause uses not the subjunctive but instead the indicative mood, because the subjunctive has no future tense.
  • Penso che Davide sarà intelligente. I think David will be smart.
• To express posteriority with respect to a past event, the subordinate clause uses the past conditional, whereas in other European languages (such as French, English, and Spanish) the present conditional is used.
  • Pensavo che Davide sarebbe stato intelligente. I thought that David would have been smart.

Regular conjugation

The infinitive of first conjugation verbs ends in -are, that of second conjugation verbs in -ere, and that of third conjugation verbs in -ire. In the following examples for different moods, the first conjugation verb is parlare (meaning to talk/speak), the second conjugation verb is temere (to fear) and the third conjugation verb is partire (to leave/depart.)

Indicative mood

Some third conjugation verbs such as capire insert -isc- between the stem and the endings in the first, second, and third persons singular and third person plural of the present, e.g., capire -> capisco, capisci, capisce, capiamo, capite, capiscono. It is impossible to tell from the infinitive form which verbs exhibit this phenomenon, which often originated in Latin verbs denoting the "inchoative" aspect of an action, that is, verbs describing the beginning of an action. There are some 500 verbs like this, the first ones in alphabetic order being abbellire, abolire, agire, alleggerire, ammattire and so forth. In some grammatical systems, "isco" verbs are considered a fourth conjugation, often labelled 3b. There are also certain verbs that end in -rre, namely trarre, porre, (con)durre and derived verbs with different prefixes (such as attrarre, comporre, dedurre, and so forth). They are derived from earlier trahere, ponere, ducere and are conjugated as such.

Subjunctive mood

The Italian subjunctive mood is used to indicate cases of desire, express doubt, make impersonal emotional statements, and to talk about impeding events.

• Third conjugation verbs like capire mentioned above insert -isc- in the first, second, and third persons singular and third person plural of the present.
• Compound forms (past and past perfect) are made by adding the past participle (e.g. parlato) to the corresponding auxiliary form (as "abbia") in the present and imperfect.

Conditional mood

From the table we can see that the verbs each take their own root, from their class of verb, -are becomes -er-, -ere becomes -er-, and -ire becomes -ir-, the same roots as used in the future indicative tense. Onto this root, all verbs add on the same ending, depending on the conjugation.

Some verbs do not follow this pattern, but take irregular roots, these include: Andare (to go) ~ Andr-, Avere (to have) ~ Avr-, Bere (to drink) ~ Berr-, Dare (to give) ~ Dar-, Dovere (to have to) ~ Dovr-, Essere (to be) ~ Sar-, Fare (to make/do) ~ Far-, Godere (to enjoy) ~ Godr-, Potere (to be able to) ~ Potr-, Rimanere (to remain) ~ Rimarr-, Sapere (to know) ~ Sapr-, Sedere (to sit) ~ Sedr-, Stare (to be/feel) ~ Star-, Tenere (to hold) ~ Terr-, Vedere (to see) ~ Vedr-, Venire (to come) ~ Verr-, Vivere (to live) ~ Vivr-, Volere (to want) ~ Vorr- etc.

The Italian conditional mood is a mood that refers to an action that is possible or likely, but is dependent upon a condition. Example:

It can be used in two tenses, the present, by conjugation of the appropriate noun, or the past, using the auxiliary conjugated in the conditional, with the past participle of the appropriate noun:

Many Italian speakers often use the imperfect instead of the conditional and subjunctive. Prescriptivists usually view this as incorrect, but it is frequent in colloquial speech and tolerated in all but high registers and in most writing:

The conditional can also be used in Italian to express "could", with the conjugated forms of potere ("to be able to"), "should", with the conjugated forms of dovere ("to have to"), or "would like", with the conjugated forms of "volere" (want):

Imperative mood

Verbs like capire insert -isc- in all except the noi and voi forms. Technically, the only real imperative forms are the second-person singular and plural, with the other persons being borrowed from the present subjunctive.

Non-finite forms

• Infinitive: present: -are, -ere, -ire; past: avere/essere + past participle
• Gerund: present: -ando, -endo, -endo; past: avendo/essendo + past participle
• Participle: present: -ante -ente -ente; past: -ato, -uto (though verbs of the second conjugation almost always have a contracted desinence, e.g. "cuocere" (to cook) "cotto" (cooked)), -ito

Irregular verbs

While the majority of Italian verbs are regular, many of the most commonly used ones are irregular. In particular, the auxiliary verbs essere and avere, and the common modal verbs potere (ability, to be able to, can), dovere (duty, to have to, must), sapere (knowledge, to know how to) and volere (will, to want to) are all irregular. Many of the irregularities are accounted for by the substance of Latin grammar; in Latin the verb had four principal parts, of which the third and fourth (perfect stem and perfect passive participle) were formed regularly from the present stem only in the first and second conjugations, whereas in the third and fourth (in -ere with short e and in -ire) the presence of the i on the stem caused a mutation of the following consonants and made irregularities at a very early stage of the language.

The first conjugation has the majority of regular verbs (except "andare" (to go), "fare" (to do, to make (from third Latin conjugation)), "dare" (to give) and "stare" (to stay), which are strongly irregular). Almost every new verb (as neologism) enters in first conjugation (e.g. formattare (to format)) and is perfectly regular.

The second conjugation is usually irregular. The few regulars are from Latin second conjugation: like "temere" (to fear), "godere" (to enjoy)... The majority is from Latin third conjugation. Most of these have developed irregularities in Italian.

The third conjugation (deriving from Latin fourth conjugation) has two different ways: Greek one (or incohative) with insertion of -sc-, "capire" (to understand), "io capisco" (I understand), and Latin one with no insertion, "sentire" (to feel), "io sento" (I feel). There are some irregulars, but not too many: example, "morire" (to die), "io muoio" (I die). The verb "dire" (to say, to tell) derives from Latin third conjugation, and is strongly irregular.

Most verbs of the second conjugation are irregular in the passato remoto (preterite) tense, which resembles the Latin perfect.

Adverbs

An adjective can be made into a modal adverb by adding -mente (from Latin "mente", ablative of "mens" (mind), feminine noun) to the ending of the feminine singular form of the adjective. E.g. lenta "slow (feminine)" becomes lentamente "slowly". Adjectives ending in -re or -le lose their e before adding -mente (facile "easy" becomes facilmente "easily", particolare "particular" becomes particolarmente "particularly").

These adverbs can also be derived from the absolute superlative form of adjectives, e.g. lentissimamente ("very slowly"), facilissimamente ("very easily").

There is also a plethora of temporal, local, modal and interrogative adverbs, mostly derived from Latin, e.g. quando ("when"), dove ("where"), come ("how"), perché ("why"/"because"), mai ("never"), sempre ("always"), etc.

Prepositions

Italian has a closed class of basic prepositions, to which a number of adverbs can be added that also double as prepositions, e.g.: sopra il tavolo ("upon the table"), prima di adesso ("before now").

In modern Italian the prepositions tra and fra are interchangeable, and often chosen on the basis of euphony: tra fratelli ("among brothers") vs. fra i tralicci ("between the power pylons").

In modern Italian, all the basic prepositions except tra, fra and per have to be combined with an article placed next to them.

Sentences and word order

Italian is an SVO language. Nevertheless, the SVO sequence is sometimes replaced by one of the other arrangements (SOV, VSO, OVS, etc.), especially for reasons of emphasis and, in literature, for reasons of style and metre: Italian has relatively free word order.

The subject is usually omitted when it is a pronoun - distinctive verb conjugations make it redundant. Subject pronouns are considered emphatic when used at all.

Questions are formed by a rising intonation at the end of the sentence (in written form, a question mark). There is usually no other special marker, although wh-movement does usually occur. In general, intonation and context are important to recognize questions from affirmative statements.

In general, adjectives come after the noun they modify, adverbs after the verb. But: as with French, adjectives coming before the noun indicate essential quality of the noun. Demonstratives (e.g. questo this, quello that) come before the noun, and a few particular adjectives (e.g. bello) may be inflected like demonstratives and placed before the noun.

Disputed points in Italian grammar

Among sometimes proscribed Italian forms are:

• the usage of an indicative form where a subjunctive one is traditional; for instance: credo che Giorgio ieri fosse a casa ("I believe that yesterday George was at home") is considered proper, while credo che Giorgio ieri era a casa may not be; se Maria fosse stata a casa, le avrei telefonato ("if Mary had been at home, I would have telephoned her") is preferred, se Maria era a casa le telefonavo is often proscribed, despite being found in classic Italian writers
• use of the object forms (lui, lei, loro and Lei) of third person pronouns instead of the subject forms (egli, ella, essi and Ella), which are employed in formal language
• ma però, despite being a widespread spoken Italian form, is proscribed in formal usage because it is redundant (since ma and però are synonyms).

Italian grammar books

The first Italian grammar was printed by Giovanni Francesco Fortunio in 1516 with the title Regole grammaticali della volgar lingua. Ever since, several Italian and foreign scholars have published works devoted to its description. Among others may be mentioned the famous Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti written by the philologist Gerhard Rohlfs, published at the end of the 1960s.

Among the most modern publications are those by Luca Serianni, in collaboration with Alberto Castelvecchi, Grammatica italiana. Suoni, forme, costrutti (Utet, Torino, 1998); and by Lorenzo Renzi, Giampaolo Salvi and Anna Cardinaletti, Grande grammatica italiana di consultazione (3 vol., Bologna, Il Mulino, 1988-1995). The most complete and accurate grammar in English is A Reference Grammar of Modern Italian by Martin Maiden and Cecilia Robustelli (McGraw-Hill, Chicago, 2000; 2nd edition Routledge, New York, 2013).

References

External links

• Verb Conjugation Trainer from Molto Bene Italian
• Accademia della Crusca
• Italian grammar at Curlie (based on DMOZ)

Source of the article : Wikipedia