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French verbs have a large number of simple (one-word) forms. These are composed of two distinct parts: the stem (or root, or radix), which indicates which verb it is, and the ending (inflection), which indicates the verb's tense (imperfect, present, future etc.) and mood and its subject's person (I, you, he/she etc.) and number, though many endings can correspond to multiple tense-mood-subject ...
There are two auxiliary verbs in French: avoir (to have) and être (to be), used to conjugate compound tenses according to these rules: Transitive verbs (direct or indirect) in the active voice are conjugated with the verb avoir. Intransitive verbs are conjugated with either avoir or être (see French verbs#Temporal auxiliary verbs).
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 ...
L'art de conjuguer also offers all of the rules concerning grammar within verb conjugation as well as a detailed guide on the purpose of each verb tense. The most recent versions cover 12,000 verbs in 95 conjugation tables. The second volume, L'orthographe pour tous (Spelling for All) explains how to convert spoken sounds in French into writing.
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"). The participle agrees with the subject when the auxiliary is être, and with a preceding direct object (if any) when the auxiliary is avoir.
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The explanation is that some words share the same orthography, so the circumflex is put here to mark the difference between the two words. For example, dites (you say) / dîtes (you said), or even du (of the) / dû (past participle for the verb devoir = must, have to, owe; in this case, the circumflex disappears in the plural and the feminine).
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).