Breakdown of I loro fratellastri non lo hanno voluto accettare.
non
not
avere
to have
loro
their
volere
to want
lo
him/it (direct object)
accettare
to accept
il fratellastro
the stepbrother / the half-brother
Questions & Answers about I loro fratellastri non lo hanno voluto accettare.
Why is there a definite article (i) before loro fratellastri? I thought family members drop the article with possessives.
You are right that we usually drop the article for family members, but there are multiple exceptions at play here! First, the possessive loro (their) always keeps the definite article, no matter what noun follows. Second, plural family members always keep the article anyway. So, i loro fratellastri is doubly required to keep it.
If the sentence was about just one stepbrother, would it still keep the article?
Why is the pronoun lo placed before hanno instead of attached to the end of accettare?
When an infinitive like accettare is paired with a modal verb like volere (to want), you have two choices for where to put the object pronoun. You can either place it before the conjugated verb, as in this sentence (lo hanno voluto accettare), or you can attach it to the end of the infinitive by dropping its final -e (hanno voluto accettarlo). Both are perfectly correct.
Does the suffix -astro in fratellastri always mean step- or half-?
In the context of family members, yes (fratellastro is stepbrother or half-brother, sorellastra is stepsister). However, when added to other nouns or adjectives, the -astro suffix usually adds a negative, pejorative, or approximate meaning. For example, un poetastro is a bad, hack poet, and verdastro means a sickly greenish color.
Why do we use hanno as the auxiliary verb here instead of sono?
In compound tenses like the passato prossimo, modal verbs like volere usually borrow the auxiliary verb of the infinitive that follows them. Since accettare takes avere as its auxiliary (hanno accettato), the modal verb also takes avere here (hanno voluto accettare).
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