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.