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Aside from être and avoir (considered categories unto themselves), French verbs are traditionally [1] grouped into three conjugation classes (groupes): . The first conjugation class consists of all verbs with infinitives ending in -er, except for the irregular verb aller and (by some accounts) the irregular verbs envoyer and renvoyer; [2] the verbs in this conjugation, which together ...
The passé composé is formed by the auxiliary verb, usually the avoir auxiliary, followed by the past participle.The construction is parallel to that of the present perfect (there is no difference in French between perfect and non-perfect forms - although there is an important difference in usage between the perfect tense and the imperfect tense).
For the past participle alone, the gender and the number. Apart from a few frequent verbs which are considered totally irregular (mainly avoir, être, aller and faire), for each tense of each mood a series of six endings (one for each person singular and plural) is associated with a group or subgroup of verbs. Each of these series must now ...
The verb aller also constructs its past participle and simple past differently, according to the endings for -er verbs. A feature with these verbs is the competition between the SUBJ stem and the 1P stem to control the first and second plural present subjunctive, the imperative and the present participle, in ways that vary from verb to verb.
Auxiliary verbs are combined with past participles of main verbs to produce compound tenses, including the compound past (passé composé). For most main verbs the auxiliary is (the appropriate form of) avoir ("to have"), but for reflexive verbs and certain intransitive verbs the auxiliary is a form of être ("to be").
Many other irregular verbs are easily recognized because the passé simple often resembles the past participle. For example, il courut (he ran) is from courir, for which the past participle is couru. Some, however, are totally irregular. Naitre (to be born) has a past participle né and yet the passé simple is (for example) je naquis (I was born).
The preterite and past participle forms of irregular verbs follow certain patterns. These include ending in -t (e.g. build, bend, send), stem changes (whether it is a vowel, such as in sit, win or hold, or a consonant, such as in teach and seek, that changes), or adding the [n] suffix to the past participle form (e.g. drive, show, rise ...
The two types of participle in Modern English are termed present participle and past participle, respectively (often also referred to as the -ing form and -ed/-en form). [15]