Past tense: Agreement of Past Participle

Très bon exercice en ligne avec correction automatique

However if you need a refresher... ( inpired by this blog's entry  )

When to put an extra 'E' or 'S'  to the past participle (and what is it)?

Good question: What is a past participle?

It is the form of the verb in a compound tense, like in ' I have seen the truth' : Seen is the past participle of the verb To See ( here in its infinitive form, the one listed in dictionnaries).  When we say that the past participle "agrees", we mean that, just like a normal adjective (which agrees in French in number and gender : un camion vert, des voitures vertes), it changes its form depending on whether it is masculine or feminine, singular or plural. The endings are the same as for normal adjectives:

	Singular	Plural
Masculine	-	s
Feminine	e	es

So for the verb Rester ( to stay)

	Singular	Plural
Masculine	resté	restés
Feminine	restée	restées

Obviously, if the past participle already ends in -s, you only agree the past participle in the feminine. So the past participle of s'asseoir (to sit down) remains assis in the masculine plural , but becomes assise and assises  in the feminine singular and plural respectively.

This point is important in written speech, but in speech you can cut corners, because the plural -S in never pronounced The feminine ending -e only changes the pronunciation if the basic form of the past participle ends in a consonant and...not that many past participles end in a consonant ( Prendre:pris, dire: dit, for instance) and...those that do generally take avoir (so generally don't need an agreement).

So basically, it's good news as far as the spoken language is concerned. In everyday spoken French, past participles rarely change their pronunciation. At GCSE level, the main past participle to remember that changes its pronunciation is in fact that of the reflexive verb s'asseoir(to sit down), which goes assis > assise. The final 's' is not pronounced in the masculine form, but is pronounced (as a z sound) in the feminine.

When to add a past participle agreement

The short answer to the "when" question is:

The past participle usually agrees when the verb takes être;

The past participle rarely agrees when the verb takes avoir

That's the short answer. The slightly longer answer is:

When the verb takes être, the past participle agrees with the subject.

When the verb takes avoir, the past participle generally doesn't agree with anything.

In writing (and so sometimes formal speech), the past participle agrees with the direct object ( you have to ask the question who or what: je vois une voiture/ je vois quoi/what? Une voiture/ Je vois un gendarme / Je vois qui? un gendarme. The DOC comes directly after the verb= no preposition or linking words) when that direct object comes before the past participle. We'll see some examples below.

When the verb is a reflexive verb, the past participle agreement is the same as for verbs taking avoir. But as we'll see, for most reflexive verbs, you can actually think of the past participle as agreeing with the subject.

Verbs taking être

These are the simplest case as the past participle always agrees with the subject.

            Il est venu                                          he has come

            Elle est venue                                   she has come

            Ils sont venus                                    they (masc) have come

            Elles sont venues                 they (fem) have come

The 'agreement' of these verbs applies basically to the written language only.

Agreement with avoir

Generally, the past participle doesn't agree with anything when avoir is used. For example, in the following sentence, the subject is feminine plural and the direct object (des cadeaux) is masculine plural, but no agreement is added to the past participle acheté:

            les filles ont acheté des cadeaux             the girls bought some presents 

However, when the direct object comes before the past participle, the past participle actually agrees with that direct object. So for example:

            Voici les cadeaux que les filles ont achetés
            Here are the presents that the girls have bought 

In the above sentence, achetés is written with an -s to agree with the direct object les cadeaux.

Note that the direct object could be a pronoun:

            Il me les a achetés hier                   He bought them for/from me yesterday 

In such cases, you need to be careful to note which pronoun is the direct object pronoun: i.e. which pronoun represents "the thing being bought" etc.

When can you hear the agreement?

You can get past participles ending in a consonant that change their pronunciation. For example:

            Voici la chanson qu'il a écrite       Here is the song that he has written 

Agreement with reflexive verbs

With reflexive verbs, the general pattern is that the past participle agrees with the subject of the verb:

            il s'est habillé                                    he got dressed
            elle s'est habillée                             she got dressed

            ils se sont ennuyés                          they got bored
            les filles se sont regardées              the girls looked at one another 

The most common reflexive verb where the past participle could change its pronunciation is s'asseoir > elle s'est assise. In most other common reflexive verbs, the past participle ends in a vowel. So for example in elle s'est habillée, the extra -e does not change the pronunciation.

Reflexive verbs with a direct object

N.B.: This section will be of more interest to advanced learners of French.

In the previous section, we stated that the past participle agrees with the subject of reflexive verbs. But actually, we could say that it agrees with the direct object, since the whole point of a reflexive verb is that the subject and object are essentially "the same thing". So in a case such as:

            Elles se sont habillées                     they (fem) got dressed

we could really argue that habillée is feminine plural because the subject elles is feminine plural, or because the direct object se is feminine plural. It makes no difference to the end result.

In fact, saying that the past participle agrees with the direct object turns out to be a better explanation. It's better because then the same rule explains what happens for some rarer cases of reflexive verbs where the reflexive pronoun isn't actually the direct object.

There are some cases of reflexive verbs where the reflexive pronoun actually represents an indirect object, generally with the sense of "to myself", to himself", "of himself" etc. For example:

            Elle s'est préparé des pâtes                    she cooked herself some pasta
            Elle s'est cassé la jambe                         she broke her leg 

In these cases, the reflexive pronoun isn't the direct object. In the first sentence, the thing being prepared is les pâtes; in the second case, the thing being broken is la jambe. And in these cases, there's no agreement on the past participle.

However, if in these cases the direct object is placed before the verb, then the past participle agrees with that direct object:

            quelle jambe s'est-il cassée?                     which leg did he break? 

So in this case, la jambe comes before the verb and so the past participle is feminine, even though the subject, il, is masculine.

In other words, the past participle agreement of reflexive verbs actually works as though the verb was conjugated with avoir! The past participle agrees with the direct object, provided that it comes before the verb.

            Voici les lettres qu'ils se sont écrites

            Here are the letters that they wrote to each other