Language/French/Grammar/Agreement-of-past-participles-with-direct-objects-placed-before-in-relative-clauses

Agreement of past participles with direct objects placed before in relative clauses

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Definitions

Subject-verb agreement

The subject-verb agreement in French is the way to choose the correct ending for verbs in terms of grammatical persons, gender and number, depending on their subject.

Past participle

The past participle is a verb form with several roles. It’s essential in the creation of compound verb tenses/moods and the passive voice, and it can also be used as an adjective. The French past participle usually ends -é, -i, or -u, and is equivalent to -ed or -en in English.

The direct object complement

The direct object complement (French: le complément d'objet direct) directly completes the verb without any preposition. The verb used with a COD is a direct transitive verb.

To find the COD of a verb, it is most often enough to ask questions:

• Quoi ? (What?)
• Qui ? (Who?)

Relative Clause

A relative clause (in French, “une proposition subordonnée relative”) provides more information about a noun or pronoun from the previous clause without having to begin a new sentence.

Examples

The underlined text in the examples below and the related clause:

• Ce sont les amis avec lesquels je suis des cours de français.

These are the friends with whom I take French lessons.

• Vincent, que je connais depuis 1 an, est très intelligent.

Vincent, whom I have known for 1 year, is very intelligent.

• Antony, qui porte des lunettes, est le plus grand du collège.

Antony, who wears glasses, is the tallest in the college.

Agreement of past participles with direct objects placed before in relative clauses

When the start of a relative clause is the implied direct object of that clause and it is placed before the verb, a past participle agrees with it in gender and number:

• Voilà l'homme que j'ai rencontré au super-marché avant-hier

There's the man I met at the supermarket the day before yesterday

• Voilà la femme que j'ai rencontrée au super-marché avant-hier

There's the woman I met at the supermarket the day before yesterday

• Voilà les enfants que j'ai rencontrés au super-marché avant-hier

There are the children I met at the supermarket the day before yesterday

• Voilà les jeunes filles que j'ai rencontrées au super-marché avant-hier

There are the girls I met at the supermarket the day before yesterday

Note: The past participles of impersonal verbs, like "il y a" (there is / there are), never agree with a complement placed before:

• II y a eu des incidents

There were incidents

• Les incidents qu'il y a eu (NOT "eus") ont été vite corrigés

The incidents that there were were quickly corrected

It's important to differentiate between this impersonal use and the personal use where the agreement would take place:

• Les incidents qu'il a eus ont été vite réparés

The incidents which he had have been quickly corrected

Other Chapters

Table of Contents

Nouns

• Types
• Gender
• Plural

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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

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Personal and impersonal pronouns

• Subject pronouns
• Object pronouns
• Stressed pronouns
• Demonstrative pronouns
• Possessive pronouns

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Prepositions

• Introduction
• Prepositions listed alphabetically from à to vers
• French translations for common English prepositions

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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

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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

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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

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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

Other Lessons

• Past Tense
• encore VS toujours
• Location of adverbs modifying sentences
• Quand utiliser QUAND et QUANT
• Invariable adjectives
• Use of the definite article with names of countries, regions, départements
• Adjective—adjective compounds
• The indirect object complement
• Dates
• Comparative forms of adjectives
• Plurals of nouns ending in –al
• Plural
• Impersonal vs Personal
• Quantifiers — tout and chaque
• Stressed pronouns with même, aussi, seul, autres, tous and numerals