Agreement in passato prossimo with "essere"

I have a question about this sentence from lesson 8.6: “Cosa vi è successo?”

In the passato prossimo with “essere” the past participle agrees in number and gender with the subject of the sentence, and “cosa” is a feminine noun, so why isn't it “Cosa vi è successa?” 

Grazie!

Hi Gwen,

In this case, even though cosa is a feminine noun, it’s not the subject of the sentence, it’s actually the object. The real subject of the verb è successo is the thing or event that “happened,” which is often left implied.

So in “Cosa vi è successo?” the literal structure is closer to “What has happened to you?” and successo is used in its masculine singular form because it refers to an unspecified thing/event (which in Italian is treated as masculine singular by default when not specified).

In short:

• Cosa = what (object)

• è successo = has happened (subject = unspecified event → masculine singular)

If you were referring to a specific feminine subject, then successa could appear. For example:

• La cosa che mi è successa = The thing that happened to me. (Cosa here is the subject.)

Hope that clears it up, feel free to reach out with more questions anytime!

A presto,

Enxhi

Hm, I did some research on this question from another source and got a different answer. 

That source said that “cosa” is the subject of the sentence, but in this case it's a pronoun that points to an unknown antecedent. Since the default gender/number in Italian is masculine singular and the antecedent is unknown, “cosa” as a pronoun takes the masculine singular. 

If the subject of the sentence were the noun “la cosa," then it would take the feminine singular form of the verb.

Hi Gwen,

Yes, that explanation you found is correct and aligns well with mine, just from a slightly different angle.

“Cosa” in this sentence does function as the subject, but since it's referring to an unknown or unspecified event, Italian defaults to masculine singular for agreement.

So:

✅ Cosa vi è successo? → “What happened to you?” → Cosa = subject, but it refers to something undefined, so we use successo (masc. sing.).

You’re also right that if cosa referred to a clearly feminine noun, we’d see successa instead, for example:

La cosa che mi è successa → “The thing that happened to me.”
Here cosa is specific and clearly feminine, so the past participle agrees.

So yes, we were saying the same thing in different ways: it’s all about whether cosa refers to something vague/unknown (→ default masc. sing.) or something clearly feminine and specific.

Love the precision of your questions, keep them coming! 😊

A presto,
Enxhi