Talk:French verbs

Conditional mood (vs tense)

Is there really a controversy among linguists about this? I don't think anyone would deny that there is a conditional mood in French (or any language), and the term "conditional tense" doesn't make much sense. If the idea is that a verb chooses one thing from the "mood" list and one thing from the "tense" list, then the conditional is in the wrong list right now. CapnPrep 12:26, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I absolutely agree with CapnPrep: a conditional tense? I don't have the French grammar books to look this up in, but it certainly doesn't fit the English definition of 'conditional' or 'tense'. Glancing at the French grammar pages on Wikipedia, they need serious rescue work. Internal contradictions... ugh. Njál 00:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I feel like I already responded to this, but I don't see my comment anywhere, so I guess I never actually submitted the edit. At any rate, if we ignore the whole issue with compound tenses (a.k.a. the perfect aspect), then there are two ways to look at things:

1. French has three finite moods: an indicative (which has five tenses — present, past/preterite, imperfect, future, and conditional), a subjunctive (which has two tenses — present and imperfect), and an imperative (which only has a present tense).
2. French has four finite moods: an indicative (which has four tenses — present, past/preterite, imperfect, and future), a subjunctive (which has two tenses — present and imperfect), a conditional (which only has a present tense), and an imperative (ditto).

That is, either the conditional can be considered a tense of the indicative, or it can be considered its own mood, with just one tense. Both viewpoints make sense the way the conditional is used. The conditional has purely temporal uses — « Je savais déjà ce qu'il arriverait le lendemain » but also purely modal ones — « Si je savais quoi faire, je le ferais ». (I think it also has blended uses, where it's partly temporal and partly modal, but I'm having difficulty formulating a plausible example.) And for that matter, the same can be said of some of the other tenses; for example, the future tense can be used to describe a future certainty (temporal use) or to describe an existing tendency (modal use), or for a few other things. (BTW, all this is equally true in English.)

But to answer your real question, "Is there really a controversy among linguists about this?", I'd have to say yes, and cite Bescherelle's La Conjugaison pour tous (ISBN 2-218-71716-6), paragraph 100, which says in part, « Le conditionnel, longtemps considéré comme un mode spécifique, est aujourd'hui rattaché à l'indicatif, pour des raisons de forme et de sens ». (Actually, I guess that's not a great source for saying there's an existing controversy, since it rather makes it sound like now everyone agrees that the conditional is better classified as a tense; but I gather that I don't need to convince you that some classify it as a mood.)

Ruakh 01:34, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I guess I understand that position. But then why not say that the imperative is also a tense that is also only used in the indicative mood (pour des raisons de forme) or only in the subjunctive mood (pour des raisons de sens)? Then we could get get rid of another mood! Yes, from a pedagogical point of view (e.g., the Bescherelle), it's nice to put the conditional and the future together somehow (same stem and similar endings). Calling them both tenses of the indicative doesn't really achieve this (the indicative is notoriously non-uniform in stems and endings). And anyway this article isn't about conjugation, so maybe we don't care about making sense of the actual forms. As Ruakh's comment suggests, this is mostly a question of terminology. And (for better or for worse) we are stuck with the traditional terminology, and traditionally, "conditional" is a modal notion (and "conditional tense" would be quite un-traditional). Why not keep in harmony with tradition (and with the conventional treatment of similar issues in other languages) if this does no violence to the French analysis? Is the conditional tense approach actually better?

One argument against the idea of adding "conditional" to the set of indicative tenses "present, preterite, imperfect, future" is that these 4 tenses can all be used in independent clauses without triggering any additional modal effect. (As Ruakh notes, the future can express probability or something like that, but it can also just express a simple temporal relation.) This is not true of the conditional in an independent clause, like "Je viendrais". This can only have the modal-conditional interpretation and never the future-in-the-past temporal interpretation. E.g. "Hier j'ai dit que je viendrais" but *"Hier je viendrais". If the temporal use is only possible in a particular syntactic configuration, I think it's hard to maintain that the conditional is fundamentally a tense. The basic interpretation of the conditional is, apparently, conditional. CapnPrep 03:36, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with your assessment. The imperative and subjunctive are taken as separate moods because they always act modally, never temporally (though sometimes there's kind of a null modality, as in « Je suis heureux que tu sois venu » and « […] le fait qu'il ait dit cela […] »). And the reason Bescherelle mentions form is not pedagogical organization, but rather that even in the conditional's modal uses, it makes semantic sense to regard the conditional as a blend of the future and the imperfect, which is indeed how it's formed in French. (Well, that's Bescherelle's claim, at any rate; I'm not sure I completely agree with it, but then, I'm not sure I'm really qualified to discard it, either.)

Further, the conditional can have either sense in an independent clause; it depends on context. (Either use requires some set-up — the temporal use requires a past-tense jumping-off point, and the modal use requires an expressed or implied condition — but in neither case is there a need for the conditional to be in a clause subordinate to an independent set-up clause. The problem with *« Hier je viendrais » is not that it's using a temporal conditional in a subordinate clause, but rather that it's using a temporal conditional with an adverb that's defined relative to the present; « Je viendrais le lendemain » is perfectly acceptable, assuming there's context for it.)

That said, I really don't object to listing the conditional as its own mood, provided we have a note that says some grammarians classify it as a tense of the indicative, etc., etc.

Ruakh 15:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't feel that strongly about what goes in the article, either (I find the talk page more interesting). I asked some French speakers about this data and they seemed to agree with me, but now I think the 1st person pronoun in the examples was stacking the deck in my favor. I think you're right, you can get main-clause futur-du-passé readings with the conditional in reported speech or "narrative" contexts: "Il était déjà dans le train. Il prendrait le premier avion et il surprendrait tout le monde." I wonder whether this really counts as an "indicative" context, though (it looks like the use of Konjunktiv across sentences in German newspaper texts).
I think one solution for the article (to get back on topic) is to use the French term "conditionnel" to refer to the form in the conjugation table. Looking at it this way, the question of deciding whether the conditionnel is a tense or a mood is completely meaningless (it's obviously neither). Then we say that the conditionnel is used in "conditional" (mood) contexts, and also to express "future-in-the-past" tense (I am still totally against any notion of "conditional tense"). CapnPrep 09:53, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree about the moods listed here, and that's for two reasons.

First, if for pedagogical reasons only, the number of moods in French is listed as six or seven, depending on where the gerund stands. If the French page of grammatical moods is not considered a valid source, then the Bescherelle should be. In "le nouveau Bescherelle: l'art de conjuger", p. 7, the following is written about moods (translation mine, emphases from the authors'):

  Moods are the different inflections by which a verb expresses the manner and the conditions in which the action is done or 
  the state is presented. There are six moods:
  1. The indicative affirms that the action is, has been, or will be: je lis, j'ai lu, je lirai.
  2. The Conditional expresses an  action, which by means of a condition, would be or would have been: 
     Je lirais si j'avais un livre (I would read if I had a book), jaurais lu si j'avais un livre 
     (I would have read if I had had a book).
  3. The Imperative expresses a prayer, a command, or a forbiddance: 
     Lis (read), mange (eat), sors (get out), ne viens pas (don't come)...
  4. The Subjunctive presents the action or the state of the subject with dependence on another verb expressing 
     necessity, will, desire, fear, or doubt: Il faut qu'il vienne (loosely, it's imperative that 
     he come), je veux qu'il parle (I want him to speak), je désire qu'il fasse cela (loosely, I desire that he does so). 
  5. The Infinitive expresses the action or the state of the subject in a vague manner, without number or person; 
     it's a true verbal noun: Lire (read), manger (eat), dormir (sleep).
  6. The Participle expresses a verbal idea under the form of an ajective without any number of person characteristics: 
     Aimant (loving), aimé (loved).

Second, with the discussion about the conditional, I want to go back to the two main divisions of grammatical moods: realis and irrealis. A realis mood (indicative in this case) expresses a factual or declarative action, and an irrealis mood (subjunctive and conditional in French) expresses an action that is not known to have happened. With this definition, there are no grounds for including the conditional with the indicative as it violates the definition of the grammatical mood itself. Actually, this definition renders the status of the future indicative tense ambiguous as it falls in the two categories. Because of the morphological similarities between the future and present conditional tenses, it was suggested that either a new mood should be created (called suppositive mood by linguist Henri Yvon), encompassing both tenses, or change the name of both tenses, as suggested by linguist Gustave Guillaume, having the indicative future become Categorical Future, and the present conditional become Hypothetical Future.

Still, even with all these possibilities, what should be done is to list the French grammatical moods as they are, and add as sidenotes, the suggestions that might become, and not the other way around, which means that, since all grammatical and conjugation sources list the current state of the conditional as a separate mood, that's how it should be listed here. Also should be added are the remaining moods (Infinitive and Participle) with a note explaining that the gerund is not always considered a separate mood as it's simply the present participle preceded by the preposition en. Fadibk (talk) 20:37, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Unclear: aie-le fait

The article currently translates "aie-le fait" (perfect imperative) as "have it done", but this explanation is not very clear to me. Can someone give a more fleshed out explanation of what situation you would use this in and what would be a longer translation in English? Thanks. Gronky 17:42, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

« Aie-le fait avant […] » means "Do it before […]", but whereas French can use either the neutral or the perfect aspect for such a situation (the preceding being the perfect-aspect version, the neutral-aspect version being « Fais-le avant […] »), English generally only uses the neutral aspect, the perfect aspect construction ?"Have done it before […]" being exceedingly rare. However, English does often use a construction that's similar to the French, both superficially and semantically: "Have it done before […]". (The French translation of this would actually be « Fais-le faire avant […] ».) So, that point in the article isn't really well covered, but I don't know how to explain it better without giving the present perfect imperative way more space than it warrants, seeing as it's a fairly rare construction in French. —Ruakh_TALK 03:42, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Venir de

This article should mention the phrase "venir de". Utterly ignorant about the proper grammatical terminology to use, I won't include it myself. And yes, this phrase isn't presented as a tense in textbooks, but it's used like one -- to express an action that took place just before another one. (Il venait de ranger la vaisselle lorsqu'elle est entrée dans la pièce). It's a greater degree of temporal precision than what one has in "Il a rangé [rangea] la vaisselle avant quelle n'entre [entrât] dans la pièce). --Zantastik talk 21:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

-- the "venir de" construction is called "passé recent" S7even

-- You're right about this one. It's called Periphrasis (or in French, temps périphrastiques http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temps_p%C3%A9riphrastique, and it applies to venir de..., aller..., and être en train de..., called semi-auxilliary verbs:

"Je viens de manger" indicates recent past (I just ate)

"Je vais manger" indicates a future (I'm going to eat), having a less formal aspect than "Je mangerai / I will eat" (almost the same implication as in English)

"Je suis en train de manger" indicates a continuous state (I am in the process of eating, or simply, I am eating) Fadibk (talk) 19:01, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Temporal auxiliary verbs

I think this part of the discussion must be transferred to or fully integrated with the Passé composé article. S7even

Futur antérieur

I don't know how to translate "fr:futur antérieur" in English (anterior future?) but this compound tense is very common and is missing in the article. It allows some nuance with sentence like "When she arrives we will go for dinner" that can be translated as "Quand elle arrivera nous irons diner" (it implies some "as soon as") or "Quand elle sera arrivée nous irons diner" (it implies a prerequisite). It would be wrong to see it like an indirect form because the auxiliary verb used depends on the main verb and so ab be "avoir" (to have) instead of "être" (to be) in my example. "Quand il aura fini de gémir nous discuterons" (when he "has stopped" whining we will talk) vs "Quand il finira de gémir nous discuterons" (when he stops whining we will talk). In other words the nuance is with "futur antérieur" the first action will be in the future from now but in the past of the second action. With simple future both actions will share the same time. Hope this helps.--Overkilled (talk) 10:16, 17 August 2008 (UTC) Damn, who is it possible that "futur antérieur" is still missing in this article while it is a very common feature of the French language ? It is only because I have a limited confidence into my English skills that haven't done the job yet. Another reason is that my only references about this topic are written in plain French. To fulfill the former description of this so-called "futur antérieur" it must be noted that the "future antérieur" action can be located into the past as well like in "il aura longtemps cru que cela ne lui était pas possible" (poorly translatable into "he had thought for a long time it is/was impossible to him". As conclusion the word "future" means it is a compound tense where the auxiliary verb (avoir or être) is conjugated with the future tense.--Overkilled (talk) 11:39, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that all five of the compound tenses are given short shrift in the section on "Tenses and aspects of the indicative mood". Is there any reason not to create a table for them similar to the one used to present the simple tenses? I'd be happy to start such a table, but am neither a native French speaker nor a linguist comfortable using the terms used in the simple tenses table. Jbusnengo (talk) 23:15, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Grammatical Voices

The introduction lists the grammatical voice as one of the conjugation schemes, but the idea is not developed in a paragraph of its own, so I will be writing this part.

PS: There are only two voices in French, not three, so I'll change the introduction accordingly. Aside from the active and passive voices, the middle voice does not exist in French. It can be partly expressed by reflexive verbs (verbes pronominaux), but as these verbs are not limited for the middle voice, they are strictly included within the active one.

Fadibk (talk) 20:48, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Examples

The article would benefit from examples of use of the subjunctive mood.

The article: "As with the indicative, the subjunctive also has one compound tense form for each simple tense form." So I imagine a two-by-two table, with the "simple tenses" in the first column, and the "compound tenses" in the second column, along with a note in each cell of the row for the imperfect subjunctive to say that this usage is archaic.

My knowledge of French doesn't allow me to do this myself. Count Truthstein (talk) 01:07, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

On further consideration, it seems that much of this information is at French conjugation. Count Truthstein (talk) 16:07, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

I've reorganized a little to make the eight tenses (which are quite neatly shown at French conjugation#Avoir) more obvious. Count Truthstein (talk) 16:35, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Lead

"French verbs are a part of speech in French grammar, with a conjugation scheme that has eight simple tense-aspect-mood forms (some rarely used) conveying four finite moods (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, and conditional), four tenses (future, present, past, and future-of-the-past), and two aspects (perfective and iimperfective)."

I see what is meant by "conveying four moods" but it is not expressed quite right. On the face of it, it is completely uninteresting what French can "convey", as all languages are capable of conveying any meaning. Rather, these "moods" are categories of whatever there are eight of, "tense-aspect-mood forms". Count Truthstein (talk) 01:42, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I've taken inspiration from a line in Italian grammar in rewriting the lead - "While the various inflected verbal forms convey a combinaton of tense (location in time), aspect, and mood, language-specific discussions generally refer to these inflectional forms as "tenses", as in what follows." Of course, what terminology is used doesn't matter as long as it is clear and consistent. Count Truthstein (talk) 02:14, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

The entire article is in fact written with the term "tense" meaning location in time, contrary to the new version of the lede. For example, a major section is called "Tenses and aspects", and all the wording is done accordingly. And this is a good thing -- otherwise, with "tense" meaning "verb form", it would be awkward to distinguish between expression of location in time and expression of aspect.

So I'm going to change the lede back to something consistent with the rest of the article. I'll try to keep it in the spirit of the rest of the recent changes. Duoduoduo (talk) 14:51, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Past Tense

I was just wondering what this article's view on the past historic tense was, for even though it is a literary tense, it is still correct. Would it not, therefore, be acceptable to provide the traditional form of the phrases with their colloquial/popular alternative? For instance:

"Je demandai qu'il partît." (Colloq. "J'ai demandé qu'il parte.")

Thanks for your time. RPlunk2853 (talk) 06:21, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Merging French verb morphology and French conjugation

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was no consensus. NukeofEarl (talk) 16:04, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

---

It seems very strange to me that there are three separate articles on French verbs, i.e. French verbs, French verb morphology and French conjugation. I don't know of any other language in Wikipedia with anything similar. I'd suggest we merge them all. These pages are respectively, 28K, 30K and 61K, and if combined with no trimming, would be 119K, which some might think is a bit large. But in fact, I think the large majority of French verb morphology is unnecessary, since it's already covered by French conjugation. I also think we can cut down large parts of French conjugation. In particular, I think everything in section 5, which makes up more than half the page, should be seriously reduced. Most of the bulk comes from full paradigms of various irregular verbs. In practice we could probably compress all of these paradigms down to a single table with one line per verb, listing the stems (or "principal parts") of each verb — there aren't than 10 or so except for a very small handful of extremely irregular verbs. For example, even a highly irregular verb like recevoir can be summarized with some general rules plus these stems:

recevoir – reçois, recevons, reçoivent – recevrai – reçu – reçus

I don't think the end result will be over 80K or 90K at the most. Alternatively, we could leave French conjugation separate but merge in (mostly eliminate text from) French verb morphology. Benwing (talk) 06:11, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

When I looked into the Académie Française's dictionnary, I saw that they actually summarize verbs in a single line (or maybe two), a bit more complete that the one you propose. I suggest you meet their approach.

HTH, Papatt (talk) 11:48, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

And about the merging: I suggest you keep both article but make the difference clearer, French conjugation being an art that has needed (and always needs) books like the Bescherelle. Papatt (talk) 12:19, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that - once you've memorized the irregular verbs and the spelling changes on -er verbs it's all quite easy. Still, it's a difficult topic and deserves an article. For that reason, I vote that French Conjugation be kept and the other articles merged. Interchangeable|talk to me 21:10, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I think French verb morphology covers a good deal of subjects that can be inmplemented into French verbs. However, I wouldn't want to see a loss/brief summary of information from French verb morphology. Simply adding the article to French verbs by extending it with French verb morphology could work, with of course merging the subjects that are covered in both articles (Indicatif, Subjonctif, etc.). French conjugation definately should retain its article status. The French Wikipedia has seven articles about it. If this merging can't work without serious content removal, then there should be three articles. Not to mention that a good three months have passed with no consensus. I'd support the removal of the merging suggestion templates, pour l'heure, if no consensus/action is met/taken. RoyalMate1 04:54, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

2.5 years later; no consensus so I've removed the proposed merge to from French_conjugation Lantrix //Talk//Contrib// 23:51, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Je veux qu'il le fasses

Is not correct!89.168.183.3 (talk) 15:57, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Past participle agreement - mistake

Section A.3 is just wrong: "The above rules apply in writing only. In speech, the past participle of a verb conjugated with avoir is nearly always invariable." There's already a [citation needed] tag but that statement is simply not true.

There might be some confusion in the author's mind because in most cases the feminine and plural form of the past participle sound identical to the default masculine and singular form, but when they don't sound identical the written form is reflected in speech.

For example:

• La robe que j'ai mise est trop petite. ("meez". sorry I don't know phonetics) is correct, but
• La robe que j'ai mis est trop petite. ("mee") is incorrect even in speech.

Also there might be some expressions (especially with faire) where the rule does not apply but these apply in text and in speech. Example: Je me rappelle des promenades qu'on a fait ensemble, here fait is the singular and masculine form even though promenades is feminine and plural ; this is correct in speech and in writing.

207.45.249.136 (talk) 16:38, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Je vais le faire

The article as it stands is unsatisfactory on the tense je vais le faire and the difference between this and je le ferai. The usage is not exactly the same as the English 'I'm going to do it' and 'I'll do it'. It would be nice to have an explanation of this. Another thing about this article, there doesn't seem to be a single reference to any grammar book, either written by a French author or an English one. I imagine there are quite a few books written by British writers explaining the differences between French and English on points such as this, but the writer does not seem to have consulted them, or indeed any book at all. Kanjuzi (talk) 15:16, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

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