French grammar Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
French grammar is the study of grammar in the French language.
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2 Nouns 3 Articles 4 Adjectives 5 Pronouns 6 Demonstratives 7 Pronouns 8 Adjectives 9 Pronouns |
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").
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 past 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.
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:
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 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: elles ont mangé les fraises que j'avais cueillies. Elles les ont mangées.
For the sixteen commonly used être verbs, the past participle always agrees with the subject: elles sont parties. For reflexive verbs, the past participle generally agrees with the subject, unless there is a direct object to the reflexive verb coming after this verb: elles se sont lavées, elles se sont lavé les mains. Past participle used in reflexive verbs that only have undirect object never agrees: elles se sont parlé (elles ont parlé à elles-mêmes).
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:
French has definite and indefinite articles, each of which is marked for gender and number:
Definite
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:
Verbs
Tenses
Compound tense auxiliary verbs
As is implied above, these verbs spell the mnemonic "Mrs Vandertamp" (or "Dr Mrs Vandertramp" if the three compounds are included).The past participle
Conjugation
Nouns
Masculine nouns:Articles
Indefinite
Definite articles can combine with certain prepositions:
There are also partitive articles, formed by the combination of de ("of") with the definite articles.Adjectives
Many compound words contain an adjective: belle-mère (one word: "mother in law) vs. belle mère (two words: "handsome mother"). Some of them use an archaic form of the feminine adjective (without -e): grand-route, grand-rue (but une grande route "a long way", ''une grande rue" "a long street").
| ! singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | je | nous |
| 2 | tu (informal), vous (formal) | vous |
| 3 | il (masculine), elle (feminine), on (neuter) | ils (masculine or mixed), elles (feminine) |
| ! singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| masculine | ce, cet (before vowel) | ces |
| feminine | cette | ces |
The preceding adjectives 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"
- cet homme-là "that man"
| ! singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| masculine | celui | ceux |
| feminine | celle | celles |
These pronouns agree with the noun they refer to (this one, that one, these ones, those ones). To distinguish between this/that and these/those, -ci or -là can be used as a suffix just as in the demonstrative adjectives
- "Tu vois cet homme? Celui-ci? Non, celui-là." "Do you see that man? This one here? No, that one over there"
Interrogatives
Quel=which or what. It agrees with the noun it modifies
Singular
Lequel is used as the interrogative pronoun in French. It signifies which one or which ones. It agrees with the noun it replaces
Singular
This is an Article on French grammar. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About French grammar Adjectives
Plural
Quel can be used as an exclamation.
Pronouns
Plural
Lequel can be contracted with a and de.
Relative Pronouns