Breakdown of La carreggiata sta venendo bloccata dalla gru.
stare
to stay, to feel, to be
venire
to come
bloccare
to block
da
by (agent of a passive verb)
la carreggiata
the roadway
la gru
the crane
Questions & Answers about La carreggiata sta venendo bloccata dalla gru.
Why do we use sta venendo instead of sta essendo to mean "is being"?
In Italian, to form the continuous or progressive passive for actions happening right now, you use stare + venendo + the past participle. You cannot use essendo as an auxiliary verb in this way. So, "is being blocked" translates to sta venendo bloccata, never sta essendo bloccata.
What is the exact difference between viene bloccata and sta venendo bloccata?
Viene bloccata is the simple passive ("is blocked"), which often describes a general fact, a routine, or an action seen as a whole. Sta venendo bloccata is the progressive passive ("is being blocked"), which explicitly emphasizes that the action of the crane blocking the roadway is unfolding at this very moment.
Why does bloccata end in -a here?
In all passive voice constructions, the past participle acts like an adjective and must agree in gender and number with the grammatical subject. Since the subject la carreggiata is feminine singular, the past participle of bloccare must become the feminine singular bloccata.
The word gru is feminine here (indicated by dalla), but it doesn't end in a typical feminine suffix. Does it change in the plural?
No, gru (crane) is an invariable noun. Nouns ending in an accented vowel, as well as a few short nouns ending in -u like gru, do not change their form in the plural. "The cranes" would just be le gru. It is a feminine word, which is why we combine the passive agent preposition da with la to make dalla.
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