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The passé composé is a compound tense, which means
that it has a helping verb and a past
participle
(also known as: auxiliairy).
Example in English:
We have seen the dog.
"have" is the helping verb; "seen"
is the past participle.
Usually the helping verb is a form of the verb "avoir;"as
in English where it's a form of the verb "to have."
The formation of the past participle
in French is as follows:
I. Regular verbs:
| er-verbs: parler | ir-verbs: finir | -re verbs: vendre |
| j'ai parlé | j'ai fini | j'ai vendu |
| tu as parlé | tu as fini | tu as vendu |
| on a parlé | il a fini | qui a vendu |
| nous avons parlé | nous avons fini | nous avons vendu |
| vous avez parlé | vous avez fini | vous avez vendu |
| elles ont parlé | ils ont fini | ils ont vendu |
| To form the past participle: drop the "er" off the infinitve and add: -é |
To form the past participle: drop the"-r" off the infinitive. | To form the past participle: drop the "-re" off the infinitive and add: "-u." |
II. Irregular verbs: follow link.
III. Uses of passé composé vs imparfait: follow link.
IV. Usually, as stated before, the helping verb is "avoir." In
some cases, however, the helping verb
is "être."
These are the so-called intransitive verbs. Some teachers feel that it's easier
to introduce
these verbs as: DrMrsvanderTramps
verbs, and for the time being that's how we shall learn them.
II.
Verbs using être in the passé composé
| Examples: | ||
| D | devenir - devenu; to become- has become | tu es devenue professeur? |
| R* | retourner - retourné; to return - has returned | tu es retourné ensemble |
| M | mourir - mort; to die - has died | son chien est mort hier |
| R* | rentrer - rentré; to go back home - has gone back home | nous sommes rentrés ensemble |
| V | venir - venu; to come - has come | nous sommes venues lundi |
| A | aller - allé; to go - has gone | vous êtes allé avec Pierre? |
| N | naître - né ; to be born - was born | vous êtes née le dix-huit janier 1989? |
| D* | descendre - descendu; to go down - has gone down | vous êtes descendus avec lui? |
| E | entrer - entré; to enter - has entered | vous êtes entrées sans frapper? |
| R | rester - resté; to stay, to remain - has stayed, remained | elles sont restées cheze nous |
| T | tomber - tombé; to fall - has fallen | elles est tombée de son lit |
| R | revenir - revenu; to come back - has come back | Jean-Pierre est revenu, n'est-ce pas? |
| A | arriver - arrivé; to arrive - has arrived | Son père est arrivé en retard |
| M | monter - monté; to climb - has climbed | Mon chien est monté l'echelle |
| P | partir - parti; to leave - has left | Je suis parti la maison |
| S* | sortir - sorti; to go out - has gone out | Je suis sortie avec mes amies. |
Look at the past participles in the examples!!! Notice
that the past participles seems to change.
Rule: when the helping verb is "être"
and, also, when you have a reflexive verb,
the past particple agrees with the subject of the sentence. It
seems to act like an adjective.
I underlined these endings in the past particple.
*Sortir,
rentrer descendre, retourner can, at times,
take a direct object. In that case "avoir"
is used as the helping verb!!!! (thanks
to Mrs. Norma Wilson, retired French teacher at Edison
High School, Huntington Beach, Ca. for this section).
In order to find out how to indentify a direct object in the sentence click
here.
Here are some examples:
| -Sortir
No direct object: With direct object: |
No direct object: With direct object: |
Descendre |
|
-Retourner No direct object: With direct object: |
 |
Little grammar: Transitive verb: a verb which can take a direct object Intransitive verb: a a verb which cannot take a direct object |
In a reflexive verb the action if the verb falls on the subject,
which means that the subject
and the (reflexive) pronoun are one and the same.
Example: I wash myself
- je me lave
She
wakes up at ten o'clock - elle se
réveille à dix heures
Note: Notice that "to wake up" is not reflexive in English; you must
realize that many more verbs are
reflexive in French
than in English. You might, almost, say
that anything that happens to your
own
body is reflexive in French.
A reflexive verb
can always be recognized by the reflexive pronoun "se"
in front of the infinitve
(se
laver, se lever, se
maquiller, se coucher, se
doucher.....)
Let me run through a reflexive verb in the present tense and in the passé
composé:
se laver - to wash oneself
| In the presents tense | In the passé composé |
| je me lave | je me suis lavé(e) |
| tu te laves | tu t'es lavé(e) |
| il se lave | il s'est lavé |
| elle se lave | elle s'est lavée |
| nous nous lavons | nous nous sommes lavés (-es) |
| vous vous lavez | vous vous êtes lavé(-s, -e, -es) |
| ils se lavent | ils se sont lavés |
| elle se lavent | elles se sont lavées. |
So, you see that the reflexive pronouns
are: me, te, se nous, vous, se -- and notice that the past
participle does agree with the subject.
There is (of course) one exception of the rule and
that is when there is a direct object present in the sentence -- then there
is NO agreement.
Example Marianne s'est lavé les main (notice NO
agreement).
(
French teachers, French natives and wise AP students: yes, I know, there is
one more nasty rule but I'll take care of that in due time: I am referring to
the case as in:
Marianna se les est lavées).
The
direct and the indirect object pronouns
(and the agreement of the Dir.Obj. Pron. in the p.c.)
| The Direct object Pronoun | The indirect object pronoun |
| me--> me Il me voit (He sees me) | me--> (to) me Elle me donne...; (she gives me...) |
| te--> you Il te voit (He sees you) | te---> (to) you Elle te donne...; (she gives you...) |
| le, la, l' --> him, it Il la voit (he sees her) | lui--> (to) him Elle lui donne...; (she gives him, her...) |
| nous--> us Il nous voit (He see us) | nous--> (to) us Elle nous donne...; (she gives us...) |
| vous--> you Il vous voit (He sees you) | vous--> (to) you Elle vous donne...; (she gives you...) |
| les--> them Il les voit (He sees them) | leur--> (to) them Elle les donne...; (she gives them...) |
Just a quick example in English how to find Direct Objects and Indirect Objects:
The coach
gave him a dog.
1. gave = verb
2. who gave = the coach = subject ("who"
gives you the subject)
3. what did he give? = a dog = direct
object ("what" gives you the direct object)
4. (to, for) whom? = him = indirect object
(if you can think "to"
or "for" in fromt of the word it's an indirect
object).
If you have the sentence: The coach gave a dog to
him, then "to him"
is a prepositional phrase.
What's a preposition? A
location word, or anything my dog Ben can do to a tree: (in, for, against, with,
next to......etc.)
The
postion of the object pronouns in a sentence:
(Please check, also, under causative faire for the postion of the pronoun)
As you may have noticed in the above examples (and, also, under
the examples for the reflexive verbs, the object pronouns
do not go in front of the verb as they do in English. Look at the exampels below
and it'll become clear where they go
in French.
Rules: in French the pronoun goes:
1. Before the verb:
Il
lui donne un cadeau pour son anniversaire.
Il
ne lui donne pas
un cadeau pour son anniversaire. (negative)
2. In the passsé composé (or any compound tense): before the helping verb:
Il
vous a donné
un cadeau pour votre anniversaire.
Il ne
vous a jamais donné un cadeau pour
votre anniversaire. (negative)
3. Before the infinitive: ( there is an axcepton to this rule (where the pronoun goes before "faire"
-- look under causative faire).
Il
voudrait nous donner
un cadeau pour notre anniversaires.
Il ne voudrait pas
nous donner un cadeau pour notre anniversaires.
(negative)
4. After the the verb in an affirmative command.
Donne-moi
un BMW pour mon anniversaire, Papa!!
Donne-lui
un BMW pour son anniversaire, Papa!!
Regarde-le!
Lave-toi!!!
(this is a reflexive verb)
NOTE:
1.The prounouns "me" and "te" become "moi"
and "toi" when they
come after the verb.
Also
note that in the above examples the verb and pronoun are joined
by a hyphen (-).
This
is, generally, true whenever one inverts the word-order in French.
2.
When the above commands are in the negative, then the order goes back to normal:
Ne
me donne pas un BMW
pour mon anniversaire, Papa!!
Ne
lui donne pas un BMW
pour son anniversaire, Papa!!
Ne
le regarde pas!
Ne
te lave pas!!!
The Direct Object pronoun and the passé composé (or any compound tense)
When the direct
object pronoun precedes the helping verb,
the past participle must agree with that
object in gender and number.
Examples:
| Nous avons acheté un livre. | Nous l'avons acheté |
| Nous avons acheté deux livres | Nous les avons achetés |
| Nous avons acheté une pomme. | Nous l'avons achetée |
| Nous avons acheté deux pommes | Nous les avons achetées |
Pronouns y and en and multiple pronouns:
I. en
replaces a de-phrase (we'll practice this)
y = there and
replaces a "to" or "at" phrase.
II.
What to do when there is more than one pronoun in the sentence?
French has a specific order in which they must
go:
Order of more than one pronoun:
Memorize the chart below (that's only
way to learn!!!)
| me |
le |
|||
| te |
la |
lui |
y |
en |
| se |
l' |
leur |
||
| nous |
les |
|||
| vous |
John gives him
it (it=a dog): Jean
le lui donne
We gave them some (some candy).
Nous leur en ont donné.
The boys saw our friends at the beach. The boys
saw them there.
Les garçons ont vu nos amis à la plage. Les
garçons les y ont vus.
The passé composé denotes an action completed within a specific or implied time frame. Examples: -She closed
the door. Elle a fermé la porte. |
Take a look below and see how the imparfait is formed and how it's used.
| donner | finir | vendre | aller |
| je donnais | je finissais | je vendais | j'allais |
| tu donnais | tu finissais | tu vendais | tu allais |
| on donnait | Papa finissait | Mama vendait | il allait |
| nous donnions | nous finissions | nous vendions | nous allions |
| vous donniez | vous finissiez | vous vendiez | vous alliez |
| elles donnaient | ils finissaient | ils vendaient | elles allaient |
Here is how you form the
imparfait:
| To form the imparfait, you take the nous form
of the verb in the present tense, drop the -ons and add the following endings: -ais; -ais; -ait; -ions; -iez; -aient |
There is only one exception to this rule and that is the verb être:
| être: |
| j'étais ................I was, used to be |
| tu étais...............you were, used to be |
| il était................he was, used to be |
| nous étions.......we were, used to be |
| vous étiez.........you were, used to be |
| elles étaient.......they were, used to be |
| Thus: the imparfait stem for être = ét- |
... if you look at how I translated the conjugation in the
imparfait of the verb être,
you can see that the translation reads: "used to be...."
Think of the word "imparfait" as it is in English: imperfect (not perfected, not finished).
1. when the meaning in English is
"used to."
- My dad was (used to be) a salesman.
Mon père était vendeur.
-Little Red Riding Hood always
sang .
Le Petit Chaperon Rouge chantait toujours
2. when describing a mental of physical
condition in the past.
-She was unhappy when she was little
-Elle était malheureuse, quand elle était
petite.
-The weather was beaufiful this summer (condition of
weather).
Il faisait beau cet été.
3. when describing a habitual or
routine action in the past.
-Since Marc had a backache, he couldn't walk fast.
Puisque Marc avait mal au dos, il ne pouvait pas marcher
vite.
4. when English uses: to
be+ ing (they were going, we were seeing..)
-We were going to the beach with him.
-Nous allions à la plage avec lui.
-Dad
was seeing a dog in the street.
-Papa voyait un chien dans la rue.
------------------------
As a very important note I must add again that the passé composé denotes an action completed within a specific or implied time frame.
Examples: -She closed the
door. Elle a fermé la porte.
- We sold the car. Nous avons vendu la voiture.