Giáo trình động từ tiếng Pháp - Part III Taking a Look Back: The Past Tenses - Chapter 12 docx

Chapter 12

Comprehending the Passé Composé

and the Pluperfect Tenses

In This Chapter

Making the passé composé with avoir

Forming the passé composé with être

Knowing how to say no in the passé composé

Making the pluperfect

Unlike the imperfect tense, which describes what was happening (see Chapter 11), the

passé composé recounts events that have already taken place and at a specific time in

the past. You use the passé composé to express a completed action in the past. For exam￾ple, with this tense you can recount what you have done and accomplished, where you’ve

been, and the people you’ve met yesterday, last week, last month, or even years ago.

Meanwhile, the pluperfect tense is closely related because it’s also a compound past tense

just like the passé composé. However, it describes events that have taken place even before

the passé composé. The meaning of the pluperfect in English is had. For example, Nous

avions déjà mangé quand papa est rentré means We had already eaten when dad came

home. Had eaten is in the pluperfect and came is in the passé composé because one action

happened before the other action.

This chapter shows you how to form the passé composé and pluperfect tenses and pro￾vides plenty of opportunities for you to practice them.

Forming the Passé Composé

The passé composé, as the name indicates, is a compound tense made up of an auxiliary

verb and a past participle. The French language has only two auxiliaries: avoir (to have) and

être (to be).

To form the passé composé, you first conjugate the auxiliaries in the present tense and then

add the past participle. (Sounds simple enough, right?) To make it even easier, remember

that most verbs take the auxiliary avoir. However, certain verbs, especially those that

express motion, such as aller (to go), partir (to leave), and venir (to come) take être. I start

with verbs that take avoir as their auxiliary.

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avoir (to have)

j’ai nous avons

tu as vous avez

il/elle/on a ils/elles ont

J’ai trois enfants. (I have three children.)

Regular verbs and the passé composé

To form the past participle of regular -er verbs, such as parler (to speak), simply drop

the r and add an accent aigu to the e, like so: é (parlé). Now add this past participle

to the auxiliary and you’ve formed the past tense.

The passé composé has three meanings in English. For example, J’ai parlé means I

spoke, I have spoken, and I did speak. Even verbs with spelling changes (see Chapter 3),

such as jeter (to throw), acheter (to buy), essayer (to try), and espérer (to hope), have a

regular past participle. Simply drop the r from the infinitive and add accent aigu to the

e, like so: jeté, acheté, essayé, and espéré.

For the regular -ir verbs, such as finir (to finish), simply drop the -r and voilà: fini. Finally,

for the regular -re verbs, like vendre (to sell), drop the -re and add a u, to get vendu.

To form the passé composé, you take the present tense of the auxiliary verb and add

the appropriate past participle. Check out the following tables that provide examples

of three verbs in the passé composé, conjugated in their entirety. Note that each has

avoir as its auxiliary.

parler (to speak)

j’ai parlé nous avons parlé

tu as parlé vous avez parlé

il/elle/on a parlé ils/elles ont parlé

Nous avons parlé aux enfants. (We spoke to the children.)

finir (to finish)

j’ai fini nous avons fini

tu as fini vous avez fini

il/elle/on a fini ils/elles ont fini

Elle a fini ses devoirs. (She finished her homework.)

vendre (to sell)

j’ai vendu nous avons vendu

tu as vendu vous avez vendu

il/elle/on a vendu ils/elles ont vendu

Les étudiants ont vendu leurs livres. (The students sold their books.)

134 Part III: Taking a Look Back: The Past Tense

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