Breakdown of È la tua valigia, la devi spostare.
essere
to be
tuo
your
dovere
must
la
her/it (direct object)
la valigia
the suitcase
spostare
to move
Questions & Answers about È la tua valigia, la devi spostare.
Why is the pronoun la placed before devi instead of attached to spostare?
When you have a modal verb (like devi, you must) followed by an infinitive verb (like spostare, to move), you have a choice of where to put the object pronoun. You can place it before the conjugated modal verb (la devi spostare), or you can attach it to the end of the infinitive. Both are completely correct and mean the exact same thing.
If I wanted to attach la to the end of the verb instead, how would I spell it?
You would drop the final -e from the infinitive spostare and attach the pronoun directly to the end, making it a single word: devi spostarla.
How do we know the pronoun la means "it" here?
Why do we say la tua valigia instead of just tua valigia?
In Italian, possessive words like tua (your) almost always need a definite article (like la, il, i, or le) in front of them. So, "your suitcase" translates literally to "the your suitcase" (la tua valigia). The main exception is for singular family members (like mio padre), but a suitcase isn't a relative!
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