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
