"A mia figlia piacciono le mele."
Translation:My daughter likes the apples.
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technically you're saying "to my daughter, apples are pleasing," so the apples (they) are the ones that are actively doing the pleasing of your daughter, and therefore it's third-person plural.
The subject of the sentence is "le mele" (note the preposition "a" in "a mia figlia").
Did this construction just start appearing without explanation? I missed it before now anyway. Thank you for clarifying!
Can this also translate as 'My daughter likes apples'? If not how would you generalise this sentence?
Yes, it can mean that, and that's normally the meaning without context.
Could you remove the "le" before "mele". A mia figlia piacciono le mele. My daughter likes the (specific) apples. A mia figlia piacciono mele. My daughter likes (generally) apples.
General concepts don't need an article in English, but they do in Italian, so no, you can't remove the "le" before "mele".
To say that your daughter likes apples in general, wouldn't that be expressed as "a mia figlia piacciono delle mele", ie using the partitive article, as it would be used in French? Wouldn't "le" be reserved for the specific apples that are on the table, say?
delle mele would mean 'some apples' which is the contrary of apples in general.
The partitive is used to refer to a part of the whole.
Even in French, one would say j'aime le pain (the concept, the food) but je mange du pain because I'm only eating a part of all the bread in the world.
I'm guessing the same reason why you don't say "la mia figlia mangia mele", just "mia figlia mangia mele".
I'm not sure what you are replying to, but levono doesn't mean anything in Italian.
They work is (essi/esse/loro) lavorano.
I wrote 'My daughters like apples' was corrected to 'My daughters like the apples'. Would a british say it like that?
Not sure about the correction that was proposed to you, but the Italian sentence says: A mia figlia piacciono le mele. That is 'my daughter likes apples". That's a singular, one daughter. 'My daughters like apples' is therefore incorrect.
