Professor Dave here, let’s look at past participles and the present perfect tense.
We know what the direct object of a sentence is, and we understand how this works with
the present tense in Italian, always preceding the verb.
That would go like this.
But we also learned about passato prossimo, and we will need to be able to use these past
participles with verbs that are in this tense.
We have previously seen this agreement for when the auxiliary verb is essere, but not
yet avere, like with the following.
Here, the subject “noi” is plural, and while essere needs an agreement in the past
participle, avere doesn’t, not even if we buy a million ice creams.
Now let’s add to this basic usage.
In Italian, there is an important rule which states that when a direct object pronoun precedes
passato prossimo, the past participle needs to agree with that pronoun in gender and number.
That might seem strange at first, since we have seen past participles agree with subjects,
but never with direct objects.
But here, the direct object is in the form of a pronoun and therefore things are a little
bit different.
While you would still ask: Hai comprato le pizze?
Since pizze is feminine and plural, and the pronoun needed is le, and we must respond:
Now let’s buy some other things so that we can see the other variations.
Remember, responses will need pronouns that reflect the gender and number of the direct
object being used.
Also, only the singular lo and la may be abbreviated with an apostrophe.
In fact, it is an important rule in Italian that there will never be an apostrophe in
any grammatical form when in the plural.
It’s also very important to remember that while the third person direct object pronoun,
whether singular or plural, requires an agreement in the participle, the agreement is optional
with the first or second person pronouns.
These are the forms mi, ti, ci, and vi.
The agreement would be correct, but Italians rarely do it.
Also, remember that there will never be an agreement when the indirect object pronoun
precedes the verb.
And now we know how to use past participles with passato prossimo.
Let’s check comprehension.