Breakdown of Siamo usciti senza svegliare il nonno.
essere
to be
il nonno
the grandfather
senza
without
uscire
to go out
Questions & Answers about Siamo usciti senza svegliare il nonno.
Why does this sentence use the infinitive svegliare instead of a gerund like the English translation does with waking?
In Italian, when a preposition like senza (without) is followed by a verb, that verb almost always takes the infinitive form. You can use this simple senza + infinitive structure because the subjects match: the people who went out are the exact same people who didn't wake the grandfather.
Can I use an explicit clause here and say something like senza che abbiamo svegliato?
Grammatically you could, but Italians avoid it when the subjects are the same. When the person doing the main action and the second action is identical, the implicit form (senza + infinitive) is much more natural. You would only use senza che (followed by the subjunctive mood) if the subjects were different, for example: We went out without him waking up.
As a quick refresher, why do we say siamo usciti instead of abbiamo uscito?
The verb uscire (to go out) is an intransitive verb of movement, so it requires essere as its helping verb in the past tense (passato prossimo). Remember that whenever you use essere, the past participle has to agree with the subject in gender and number. Since the subject is we, the ending changes to the plural -i (or -e for an all-female group).
How would the verb change if we meant waking ourselves up instead of waking the grandfather?