Breakdown of La decisione è stata presa dalla prefetta e dalla questora.
essere
to be
e
and
prendere
to take
la decisione
the decision
da
by (agent of a passive verb)
la prefetta
the female prefect
la questora
the female police commissioner
Questions & Answers about La decisione è stata presa dalla prefetta e dalla questora.
The feminine forms prefetta and questora are used here. Why not just say la prefetto and la questore?
Historically, women in these high-ranking roles were called by the masculine title (like la prefetto). However, modern Italian strongly encourages using proper feminine endings for all professions. For nouns ending in -o like prefetto, the feminine is prefetta. For nouns ending in -ore, the feminine is usually -trice (like direttrice), but for some institutional or bureaucratic titles like questore, the accepted modern feminine is questora.
Why is the past participle presa in the feminine singular form?
This sentence uses the passive voice. When forming the passive voice with essere (here, è stata), the past participle must agree in gender and number with the subject of the sentence. Since the subject La decisione is feminine singular, the participle preso changes to presa.
In English we say a decision is made. Why does Italian use presa (taken)?
This is a standard Italian collocation. You do not use fare (to make or do) with decisions. The active phrase is always prendere una decisione (literally, to take a decision), so the passive is la decisione è stata presa.
Why do we need the combined preposition dalla before both titles?
In a passive sentence, the agent (whoever is performing the action) is introduced by the preposition da (by). Because prefetta and questora are specific job titles, they require the definite article la. Combining da and la gives you dalla. In Italian, it is standard to repeat this combined preposition before each distinct noun in a list.
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