Practice Makes Perfect French Past-Tense Verbs Up Close

By Annie Heminway

Solve the mysteries of French past-tense verbs

Practice Makes Perfect: French Past-Tense Verbs Up Close puts the spotlight on this tricky grammar trouble spot. It boasts plenty of opportunities for practicing your language skills, as well as extensive examples based on a conversational style that will keep you engaged. The book also features a unique answer key that gives you more than just a listing of correct answers; it clues you in on the "why" behind them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
• Release date: Oct 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9780071753999

Book preview

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT™

French Past-Tense Verbs

Up Close

Annie Heminway

Copyright © 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-175399-9

MHID: 0-07-175399-0

The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-0-07-175398-2, MHID: 0-07-175398-2.

All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Where such designations appear in this book, they have been printed with initial caps.

McGraw-Hill eBooks are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales promotions, or for use in corporate training programs. To contact a representative please e-mail us at [e-mail].

Trademarks: McGraw-Hill, the McGraw-Hill Publishing logo, Practice Makes Perfect, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of The McGraw-Hill Companies and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The McGraw-Hill Companies is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

TERMS OF USE

This is a copyrighted work and The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (McGraw-Hill) and its licensors reserve all rights in and to the work. Use of this work is subject to these terms. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976 and the right to store and retrieve one copy of the work, you may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, reproduce, modify, create derivative works based upon, transmit, distribute, disseminate, sell, publish or sublicense the work or any part of it without McGraw-Hill’s prior consent. You may use the work for your own noncommercial and personal use; any other use of the work is strictly prohibited. Your right to use the work may be terminated if you fail to comply with these terms.

THE WORK IS PROVIDED AS IS. McGRAW-HILL AND ITS LICENSORS MAKE NO GUARANTEES OR WARRANTIES AS TO THE ACCURACY, ADEQUACY OR COMPLETENESS OF OR RESULTS TO BE OBTAINED FROM USING THE WORK, INCLUDING ANY INFORMATION THAT CAN BE ACCESSED THROUGH THE WORK VIA HYPERLINK OR OTHERWISE, AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. McGraw-Hill and its licensors do not warrant or guarantee that the functions contained in the work will meet your requirements or that its operation will be uninterrupted or error free. Neither McGraw-Hill nor its licensors shall be liable to you or anyone else for any inaccuracy, error or omission, regardless of cause, in the work or for any damages resulting therefrom. McGraw-Hill has no responsibility for the content of any information accessed through the work. Under no circumstances shall McGraw-Hill and/or its licensors be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, punitive, consequential or similar damages that result from the use of or inability to use the work, even if any of them has been advised of the possibility of such damages. This limitation of liability shall apply to any claim or cause whatsoever whether such claim or cause arises in contract, tort or otherwise.

Contents

Preface

1 Yesterday … The passé composé

2 Those were the days: The imparfait

3 All things must pass: The plus-que-parfait

4 And tenses rolled along … Variations in using both the passé composé and the imparfait

5 Keep it simple: The passé simple

6 The palette of the pasts: The other past tenses

7 Come together: Comprehensive exercises

8 The past awakening: Sampling of past tenses and translation obstacles in French literature

Answer key

Preface

Students are typically introduced to the past tenses—French has ten in all!—via the passé composé, followed by the imparfait. They are presented in a very simple way, with direct English equivalents, so as not to be overwhelming (Oh no, another verb tense!). In the case of the passé composé, it is initially easy to learn, as students are already familiar with the present tense conjugations of the auxiliary verbs avoir and être, and there is only one past participle to remember. The imparfait requires more memorization, but the verb endings are similar to those in the present tense, so they are also not difficult to learn.

However, the problem arises when these tenses are not revisited over time. Although they may be simple to learn at first, there are many nuanced uses that are never reviewed, causing confusion and error later on. For example, the imparfait is presented as a tense indicating a repeated action that took place in the past. But does it matter how long ago in the past that action occurred—and would there be an instance when the imparfait was not the tense to use?

The purpose of this book is to provide an overall review of these two tenses and then to focus on their trickiest uses—the ones where students tend to make the most mistakes. Through concrete examples, including some taken from literary sources, students will learn to analyze the nature of the past that is being reflected in the sentence and make the correct choice of past tense without difficulty.

While stressing the passé composé and the imparfait, students will also learn other past tenses like the passé simple, le futur antérieur, le passé antérieur, le conditionnel passé, le subjonctif passé, l’infinitif passé, and the infinitif passé to get an overall sense of the realm of the French past.

If you are not familiar with some words, use your dictionary or any free online dictionary.

Let’s hop in our time machine and fall in love with the past!

•1•

Yesterday …

The passé composé

A number of different tenses in French are used to talk about the past. The tense most commonly used is the passé composé, which is also called the compound past or the past perfect. It is used to refer to a single action in the past. It is used in everyday language and describes past actions or states of mind. Some writers opt for the passé composé instead of the passé simple. It can be a question of style, preference, or literary orientation.

In form, the passé composé is a combination of the present tense of the auxiliary verb, either avoir (to have) or être (to be), and a past participle. The past participle is formed by adding an ending to the verb stem. Regular past participles take the following endings:

Note that the passé composé can be translated in different ways in English. The translation depends on the context.

In the negative form, the ne is placed in front of the auxiliary verb, avoir or être, and the pas is placed after it:

In the interrogative form, there are three ways to formulate a question using the passé composé:

The passé composé of regular verbs conjugated with avoir

Most verbs are conjugated with the auxiliary verb avoir in the passé composé. Before looking at how it is done, let’s first review the present tense of avoir:

When avoir is used in the passé composé, with a few exceptions, the past participle does not agree in gender and number with the subject of the verb.

The passé composé with -er verbs

For regular verbs ending in -er, the passé composé is formed using the present tense of the auxiliary verb avoir (or être) + the past participle. Drop the infinitive ending -er, and add the participle ending -é. Take a look at the following examples:

EXERCICE 1.1

Mettre les verbes entre parenthèses au passé composé.

1. Nous (parler) de notre prochain voyage aux Galapagos.

2. Lucie (proposer) à Antoine d’aller au cinéma.

3. Tu (trouver) la fève dans ta part de galette des rois. Tu es la