Language/French/Grammar/Subject-verb-agreement
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Subject-verb agreement
As in English, French verbs agree with their subject in person and number:
- Je ne voulais pas jouer
I didn't want to play
- Elle voulait partir en vacances
She wanted to go on holiday
- Les garçons voulaient tous participer au match
The boys all wanted to take part in the match
Other Chapters
Table of Contents
Nouns
Determiners
- Articles
- Typical use of the definite article
- Typical use of the indefinite article
- The partitive article: du, de l', de la, des
- Use of indefinite and partitive articles after the negative forms ne... pas, ne... jamais, ne... plus, ne... guère
- Omission of the article
- Demonstrative determiners
- Possessive determiners
Personal and impersonal pronouns
Adjectives
- Adjectives modifying the noun
- Adjectives which follow verbs or verbal expressions
- Adjectives with complements
- Indefinite and negative noun phrases with adjective complements
- Adjectives used as nouns
- Adjectives used as adverbs
- Masculine and feminine forms of adjectives
- Plural forms of adjectives
- Adjective agreement with nouns
- Invariable adjectives
- Compound adjectives
- Comparative and superlative forms of adjectives
- Subjunctive versus indicative in clauses dependent on a superlative adjective
- Absolute use of the superlative
Adverbs
- Function of adverbs
- Formation of adverbs with the ending -ment
- Adjectives used as adverbs without addition of -ment
- Phrases used as adverbs
- English and French adverb formation
- Types of adverbs
- Location of adverbs
Numbers, measurements, time and quantifiers
- Cardinal numbers
- Ordinal numbers
- Fractions
- Some differences in the use of cardinal and ordinal numbers in French and English
- Measurements and comparisons
- Dates, days, years
- Clock time
- Money
- Quantifiers
Verb forms
- Conjugations
- Easy ways of generating some parts of the paradigms
- Changes in the stem form of some -er conjugation verbs
- Verbs whose stems end in c- or g-
- Verb paradigms
Verb constructions
- Relations between verbs and their complements
- Intransitive constructions
- Directly transitive verbs
- Indirectly transitive verbs
- Ditransitive verbs
- The passive
- Pronominal verbs
- Impersonal verbs
- Verbs which take noun + adjective or noun + noun complements
Verb and participle agreement
- Subject-verb agreement
- Agreement of the past participle with the subject of être
- Agreement of the past participle of verbs conjugated with avoir with a preceding direct object
- Agreement of the past participle of pronominal verbs in compound tenses
Tense
- The present
- The past
- The future
- Other tenses indicating the time at which events occur relative to other events
- Combining tenses
- Tenses in direct and reported descriptions of events
- Tenses with si
The subjunctive, modal verbs, exclamatives and imperatives
- The attitude of the subject to events: the subjunctive
- The use of devoir, pouvoir, savoir, falloir
- The French equivalents of the English modal verbs: 'would', 'should', 'could', 'may', 'might', 'ought to', and 'must'
- Exclamatives
- Imperatives
The infinitive
- Introduction: what are infinitives?
- Infinitives as complements to other verbs
- Verbs which take infinitive complements without a linking preposition
- Verbs which take infinitive complements preceded by the preposition à
- Verbs which take an infinitive complement preceded by de
- Omission of objects before infinitives
- Infinitives as complements to adjectives
- Infinitives as complements to nouns
- Infinitives in subordinate clauses
- Infinitives as polite commands
- Quick-reference index to verbs taking infinitive complements
Prepositions
- Introduction
- Prepositions listed alphabetically from à to vers
- French translations for common English prepositions
Question formation
- Introduction
- Yes/no questions
- Information questions
- Order of object pronouns in questions involving inversion
- Order of negative particles in questions involving inversion
- Use of question words and phrases: qui?, que?, quoi?, quel?, de qui?, avec combien de? etc.
- Indirect questions
Relative clauses
- Introduction
- Use of relative qui
- Use of relative que
- Preposition plus qui
- Use of lequel in relative clauses
- Use of dont, de qui, duquel/de laquelle/desquels/desquelles
- The use of où as a relative pronoun
- Use of relative quoi
- Free relative clauses and the use of ce qui, ce que, ce dont, ce à quoi, ce sur quoi, etc.
- Translating 'whoever', 'whatever', 'wherever', 'whenever', 'however'
- Indicative and subjunctive in relative clauses
Negation
- Introduction
- Location of sentence negators
- Order of negators in multiple negation
- Omission of ne in sentence negation
- Order of negative elements in questions and imperatives
- ne... pas
- ne... que
- ne... aucun(e), ne... nul(le)
- ne... jamais
- ne... plus
- ne... guère
- ne... rien
- ne... personne
- ne... ni... ni
- sans used with other negators
- ne used alone
Conjunctions and other linking constructions
- Introduction
- Coordinating conjunctions
- Subordinating conjunctions
- Conjunctions sometimes confused by English speakers
- Repeated subordinating conjunctions
- Subordinating conjunctions used with infinitive clauses
- après avoir/ être + past participle linking an infinitive clause to a main clause
- Past participle phrases used as linkers
- Present participles and gerunds