Oh man, sometimes I just don’t GET this kooky grammar.
Struggling with what should be a s-i-m-p-l-e grammar construct, I spent 2 hours trawling (in vain) through grammar textbooks, notes and the like, digging myself deeper into a hole with each passing minute.You know what it’s like when you are thinking so hard about something that you can’t see anything else clearly and your head becomes so clogged that you start to think around in circles, when the best thing is to step back, do something totally removed and then all too often, the right answer pops into mind with crystal clarity?Well, that’s what happened. A terrible night sleep, tossing and turning with this on my mind but a grim, (Dementor-like?) determination to work it out…

Then this morning, under the shower… the answer just popped into mind.
Crystal clear. Just like that.

So here’s the problem.
I was working on the imperative verb form (2nd person singular) with an unstressed pronoun; my starting premise is that when the imperative is used in an affirmative sentence with an unstressed pronoun, the pronoun is suffixed to the verb.

When I’m using one of the typical irregular verb forms (dare, fare, dire, stare and andare), the imperative takes the expected form (da’, fa’, di’, sta’, va’).
If the unstressed pronoun is used with these imperative forms, the first consonant of the pronoun is doubled (except gli).

OK, I’ve got that clear.

My confusion lay in the use of the pronoun ci.
This confusion came about, not just because of my genetic predisposition towards abject stupidity, but because I’d always taken ci to mean the 1st person plural, “we”.
I’d also managed to wrap my brain around the use of ci as a direct object pronoun, “us” and as an indirect object pronoun, “to us”.

But in these examples, the pronoun ci translates as “there”.

I was happy to take that as a given, but I was looking for a definitive grammar construct that spells it out.

And here it is…fresh from the shower!

The pronoun ci is used to replace a noun denoting a place; it corresponds to the English “there”.
The classic cases are when used with the verb essere – i.e. c’’e and ci sono, but it can be used with any verb.
Ci usually comes before the verb although like other unstressed pronouns, it can be attached as a suffix.

Qui sono i miei esempi.
Rispondo alle domande con l’imperativo, faccio attenzione ai pronomi.