French grammar
French grammar is the study of
grammar in the
French language.
Verbs
There are three main verb categories, with infinitives ending in -er, -ir and -re. Verbs in -ir are further divided into two groups, based on whether the infix -iss- appears in some parts of the conjugation.
Historically, these groups reflect Latin verbs in -are, -ire, and -ere. The -iss- infix is a development of the Latin inchoative infix -isc-; it appears as -isc- in Italian, -esc- in Romanian, and also (through French) in several English verbs ending in -ish with an inchoative meaning (finish, polish, nourish, etc.).
Verbs are conjugated by the addition of endings to the verb stem, which is normally found by removing the infinitive ending. A single ending encodes person, number, tense, and mood. Many of the endings, however, have identical (and minimal) phonetic realizations; it is common for the first person singular, second person singular, third person singular, and third person plural forms to all be homophones. Personal pronouns are therefore obligatory in modern French -- usually just the conjunctive series, but often supplemented in spoken French by the disjunctive series as well: "Moi, je chante" ("Me, I sing").
Tenses
French verbs are commonly conjugated in five simple tenses and five compound tenses. They are also conjugated in the "literary" or "historic" tenses, each of which have an equivalent commonly used tense. These literary tenses are used often in literature and history. There are two simple literary tenses and three compound literary tenses.
The commonly used simple tenses are: the present tense (le présent), the imperfect (l'imparfait), the future (le futur), the present subjunctive (le subjonctif) and the present conditional (le conditionnel).
The commonly conjugated compound tenses are the perfect (le passé composé), the pluperfect (le plus-que-parfait), the future perfect (le futur antérieur), the imperfect subjunctive (le subjonctif passé) and the past conditional (le conditionnel passé).
The perfect is the tense in common use used to describe actions that were started and completed in the past. The imperfect is the tense used to describe actions that were ongoing or continuous in the past or to describe habitual or repetitive action. The present and past subjunctives are used to describe doubt, emotions, possibilities and events which may or may not occur.
The simple literary tenses are the simple past or past historic (le passé simple), replaced in ordinary language by the perfect tense, and the imperfect subjunctive (l'imparfait du subjonctif), replaced in ordinary language by the present subjunctive.
The compound literary tenses are the past anterior (le passé antérieur), usually replaced by the pluperfect; the pluperfect subjunctive (le plus-que-parfait du subjonctif), usually replaced by the past subjunctive; and a second form of the past conditional.
Of the literary tenses, only the past historic tends to be used commonly any more. While grammatical distinctions were lost when the literary tenses fell out of common usage, the distinctions were not important enough for confusion to result.
Aside from these tenses, there is an imperative, a participle, and the infinitive, each of which can be inflected for tense (present and past), although the past imperative is quite rare.
Compound tense auxiliary verbs
In French, all compound tenses are formed with an auxiliary verb (either être "to be" or avoir "to have"). Most verbs use avoir as their auxiliary verb. The exceptions are sixteen commonly used verbs of motion, their derivatives, and all reflexive verbs. Those sixteen verbs, plus three common compounds, are:
- (Devenir)\n* (Revenir)\n* Monter\n* Rester - to stay\n* Sortir\n* Venir - to come\n* Aller\n* Naître\n* Descendre\n* Entrer \n* Retourner - send back\n* Tomber - to fall\n* (Rentrer) - to return\n* Arriver - to arrive\n* Mourir - to die\n* Partir
As is implied above, these verbs spell the mnemonic "Mrs Vandertamp" (or "Dr Mrs Vandertramp" if the three compounds are included).
The distinction between the two auxiliary verbs is important for the correct formation of the compound tenses and is also essential to the agreement of the past participle.
The past participle
The past participle is used in French as both an adjective and to form all the compound tenses of the language. When it is used as an adjective, it follows all the regular agreement rules of the language, but when it is used in compound tenses, it follows special agreement rules.
-er verbs form the participle by changing the -er ending to -é, -ir verbs by changing -ir to -i, and -re verbs by changing to -u. Therefore, the past participle of parler, "to speak", is parlé; for finir, "to finish", fini, and for vendre, "to sell", vendu.
The rules of agreement for past participles differ for avoir verbs and être verbs. For avoir verbs, the past participle does not agree with the subject unless the direct object comes before the verb, either in the form of a pronoun or a relative clause using que.
For the sixteen commonly used être verbs, the past participle always agrees with the subject. For reflexive verbs, the past participle generally agrees with the subject, unless there is a direct object to the reflexive verb.
Nouns
French has two grammatical genders (masculine and feminine) and two numbers (singular and plural). For animate nouns, grammatical gender usually corresponds to natural gender. Gender is unpredictable from the form of a noun alone, although there are some general trends.
Feminine nouns:
- all nouns in -sion, -tion, -aison, -ance
Masculine nouns:
- most nouns in -ment, -eur
Articles
French has definite and indefinite articles, each of which is marked for gender and number. Definite articles can combine with certain prepositions:
- à + le > au, à + les > aux\n* de + le > du, de + les > des
There are also partitive articles, formed by the combination of de ("of") with the definite articles.
Adjectives
Most adjectives follow the noun, except for a small but common subset. For some adjectives, the meaning changes based on its position relative to the noun:
- mon ancienne maison ("my former house") vs. ma maison ancienne ("my ancient house")\n* ma propre maison ("my own house") vs. ma maison propre ("my clean house")
Pronouns
- je - I\n* tu - thou, you (familiar singular)\n* il, elle - he, she\n* nous - we\n* vous - you (plural, used as polite singular)\n* ils, elles - they
Personal Pronouns
Demonstratives
Singular\n* ce (masc. before consonant, as in ce jour)\n* cet (masc. before vowel, as in cet enfant, cet homme)\n* cette (fem., as in cette femme)\nPlural\n* ces
The preceding pronouns can mean either "this" or "that", "these" or "those". To be more precise, -ci or -là can be inserted after the noun:
- cet homme-ci "this man"\n* cet homme-là "that man"
Note that this is only done to avoid ambiguity.
Interrogatives
Relative Pronouns
