French Verbs

The structure of French verbs is not difficult to comprehend for a native English speaker, since most of the forms parallel or are very close in meaning to those employed in English. One seeming major difference is that French employs two “moods”: the indicative and the subjunctive. The mood of the verb does not refer (at least directly) to the mood of the speaker but rather to the type of statement that he or she is making. The indicative can be thought of as the “normal” verb mood (or mode), while the subjunctive is used in a number of special circumstances— in connection with orders, desires, uncertainty, etc. Contrary to what many might think, the subjunctive also exists in English, though its existence generally passes unnoticed, since subjunctive and indicative verb forms in Modern English are almost always the same. But a sentence like :

I insist that he be punished

provides an illustration that there is at times a difference between the two. In addition to the indicative and subjunctive, there is a third verbal “mood” in both French and English— the imperative (e.g., “Go!” “Run!”). For any English verb there are essentially only ?ve “simple” forms:

infinitive present past past participle present participle

(to) write write(s) wrote written writing

All other verb forms are compound ones created from the simple ones by using various auxiliaries or “helping” verbs (e.g., I was writing, I will write, I would have written).

For French, there are eleven simple verb forms— the ?ve English ones, plus:

indicative subjunctive imperative

imperfect future conditional present imperfect present

French verbs can be divided into four groups according to the endings of their infinitives:

1. -er verbs parler “to speak”

2. -oir verbs recevoir “to receive”

3. -re verbs répondre “to respond”

4. -ir verbs finir “to finish”

The -er verbs are by far the most numerous, The -er verbs are also the most dynamic, in the sense that “new” verbs virtually without exception take this ending.

In French, as in most languages, a “Murphy’s law of verbs” seems to hold:

1. Regular verbs are infrequently used.

2. Frequently used verbs are irregular.

but with one important advantage: a very large number of (seemingly) irregular verbs follow easily understood and readily remembered patterns. This applies in particular to virtually all of the nearly 800 “irregular”-er verbs: only two do not follow precise patterns throughout their conjugations.

The contrasting pronunciations of parte and part illustrate that the final -e (unless it has a written accent) and most final consonants are not pronounced. Word final -e thus serves generally only as a marker that the preceding consonant is pronounced. A common example of this is the feminine form of nouns and adjectives— e.g., verte (“green”, feminine) pronounced [vert], vert (masculine) pronounced [ver].

There are in fact ?ve other types of “E” with which we will not be directly concerned, exempli?ed by the vowe e ls ?n the following words— le, peu, peur, plein, un— and represented symbolically (IPA) by ∍, ø, œ, e ˚ , œ. ~

An open syllable is one in which the vowel is the last (spoken) element— e.g., all three syllables in avocat: [a•vo•ca] A closed syllable is one in which the ?nal (spoken) element is a consonant— e.g., the ?rst syllables in both parler and taxer: [par•lÉ] [tak•sÉ]

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