Breakdown of Speravo che la polizia avesse cancellato l'allerta.
cancellare
to cancel
sperare
to hope
che
that (conjunction introducing a clause)
la polizia
the police
l'allerta
the alert (f)
Questions & Answers about Speravo che la polizia avesse cancellato l'allerta.
Why do we need the pluperfect subjunctive (avesse cancellato) in this sentence?
The main verb speravo (I hoped) triggers the subjunctive because it expresses a feeling or desire. Since speravo is in the past tense, we use the pluperfect subjunctive (trapassato congiuntivo) to talk about an action that happened even before that past hope. The canceling of the alert happened before the hoping.
Why is the auxiliary verb avesse used here instead of fosse?
The verb cancellare (to cancel) is a transitive verb, meaning it acts on a direct object (l'allerta). Verbs with direct objects use avere as their auxiliary verb. To form the pluperfect subjunctive, we put avere into the imperfect subjunctive, giving us avesse for the third-person singular.
Since both polizia and allerta are feminine, why doesn't the past participle change to cancellata?
In English, we usually treat police as a plural noun (the police have). Is it plural in Italian?
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