Can anyone explain to me what the verb formation of “venne” is here?
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A similar sentence may be helpful: “Il vino viene servito freddo”. The wine comes served cold.
Passato remoto “venire - venne”. The fact was/came brought to light.
Anyone more technical, feel free to correct me, it’s just how I read it.
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It’s the “simple past” form, generally used for unique instances of events, which have finished (as opposed to the “imperfect” past, which is used for habits, or ongoing events). It tends to take very “interesting” forms for lots of verbs in Italian.
I always use this website to look up various verb forms I’m unfamiliar with.
If you type in “venne” there, you will see that it comes from “venire”.
Then you can search in the page and see that it is 3rd person singular “passato remoto”.
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Passato remoto of venire
Conjugation venire | Conjugate verb venire Italian | Reverso Conjugator
… or from Clozemaster All You Need to Know About the “Venire” Conjugation in Italian (clozemaster.com)
venire can also be used as an auxiliary verb to form the passive voice (as in this case) instead of essere.
(My grammar book says that venire is preferred to essere when forming the passive voice with verbs of action … but then doesn’t define what it means by “verbs of action”.)
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My understanding (thanks to CivisRomanus on Duo) is that “venire” is an alternative auxiliary for “essere” when forming the passive voice.
It can make the meaning clearer because many adjectives are the same as the past participle.
Il cancello è aperto = the gate is opened
but also
Il cancello è aperto = the gate is open.
So to say “the gate is opened” it is clearer to say “il cancello viene aperto”.
For more detail you can read Civis comments if you search Passive - part II on Duo.
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Ciao a tutti. By coincidence while reading (or at least trying to;-) “La paura di Montalbano” I have found many examples of this “venire”. “Appena raprì la porta di casa, venne investito da Adelina”. And to a lesser extent “Quando venne il suo turno…” ecc. It’s quite a handy way to learn more of the p/remoto which I tend to avoid.
Hai ragione @David755502, Civis’s notes are golden.
A dopo…
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Brilliant, all — especially David. I saw it in the conjugator of wordreference.com, but had no idea why it would be used in this way. Very helpful!
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