French verbs

In French grammar, verbs are a part of speech. Each verb lexeme has a collection of finite and non-finite forms in its conjugation scheme.
Finite forms depend on grammatical tense and person/number. There are eight simple tense–aspect–mood forms, categorized into the indicative, subjunctive and imperative moods, with the conditional mood sometimes viewed as an additional category. The eight simple forms can also be categorized into four tenses, or into two aspects.
The three non-finite moods are the infinitive, past participle, and present participle.
There are compound constructions that use more than one verb. These include one for each simple tense with the addition of or as an auxiliary verb. There is also a construction which is used to distinguish passive voice from active voice.

Conjugation

French verbs are conjugated by isolating the stem of the verb and adding an ending. In the first and second conjugation, the stem is easily identifiable from the infinitive, and remains essentially constant throughout the paradigm. For example, the stem of is parl- and the stem of is fin-. In the third group, the relationship between the infinitive form and the stem is less consistent, and several distinct stems are needed to produce all the forms in the paradigm. For example, the verb has the stems boi-, boiv-, bu-, and buv-.
The ending depends on the mood, tense, aspect, and voice of the verb, as well as on the person and number of its subject. Every conjugation exhibits some degree of syncretism, where the same form is used to realize distinct combinations of grammatical features. This is most noticeable for -er verbs. For instance, the conjugated form parle can be the 1st or 3rd person singular indicative or subjunctive form of parler, or the singular familiar imperative. Furthermore, the 2nd person singular indicative and subjunctive form parles and the 3rd person plural form parlent are pronounced the same way as parle. The prevalence of syncretism in conjugation paradigms is one functional explanation for the fact that French does not allow null subjects, unlike most of the other Romance languages.

Classification

Aside from and , French verbs are traditionally grouped into three conjugation classes :

The first conjugation class consists of all verbs with infinitives ending in -er, except for the irregular verb and the irregular verbs and ; the verbs in this conjugation, which together constitute the great majority of French verbs, are all conjugated similarly, though there are a number of subclasses with minor changes arising from orthographical and phonological considerations.
The second conjugation class consists of all verbs with infinitives in -ir or -ïr and present participles in -issant or -ïssant, as well as the verb. There are somewhat over 300 such verbs, all conjugated identically, with some minor exceptions. The -iss- or -ïss- in much of their conjugation is a reflex of the Latin inchoative infix -isc-/''-esc-, but does not retain any aspectual semantics.
The third conjugation class consists of all other verbs: aller, arguably envoyer, a number of verbs in -ir, and all verbs in -re''. Nonetheless, this class is very small compared to the other two, though it does contain some of the most common verbs. This class has a few dozen subclasses, often differing substantially; indeed, this class is essentially a catch-all for verbs, besides and, that do not fit into the first two classes. There are about 370 verbs in this group, though a much smaller number are still in frequent use.
Moods

As with English verbs, French verbs have both non-finite moods, also called verbals, and finite ones.

Finite moods

The finite moods are the indicative, the imperative, and the subjunctive. As discussed below, sometimes the conditional is recognized as a fourth mood. While the rules that determine the correct mood are quite complex, they are simplified and summarized in the following table:

indicative	used in most independent clauses used in affirmative and negative statements and questions used in dependent clauses that are certainly true used when no other mood applies	« Où êtes-vous ? » « Je suis ici. »
subjunctive	used in many dependent clauses used to express a doubtful, desired, or requested event used to express an event to which the reaction is of most significance used to express a third-person imperative used much more than in English	« Il se peut qu'il vienne demain. » « J'ai demandé qu'il parte. » « Je suis heureux qu'il soit venu. » « Vive la République ! »
imperative	used in commands and requests only possible with first-person plural and second-person singular and plural subject the subject is implied almost exactly as in English	« Fais tes devoirs ! » « Faisons nos devoirs ensemble. »

Many linguists recognize a fourth mood, the conditional, which is used in almost exactly the same circumstances as the conditional in English. In French, « Je le ferais si j'avais assez de temps » is "I would do it if I had enough time" in English. The conditional can also be used evidentially, to express reservations about the verb: « Il serait suivi par un psychologue », "He is apparently/is said to be/ under the care of a psychologist." Other linguists consider the conditional to be a tense of the indicative mood. The two camps do not disagree on the rules for when and how to use the conditional. A third camp recognizes both "conditionnel présent/conditionnel passé", and "indicatif futur du passé / indicatif futur antérieur du passé", but they recognize also that both are conjugated the same.

Non-finite moods

The infinitive has a present tense, with a perfect: "faire" means "to do", while "avoir fait" means "to have done".
There is a present participle, with a perfect construction: "faisant" means "doing", while "ayant fait" means "having done". As noted above, this participle is not used in forming a continuous aspect. Further, it cannot be used as a noun, in the way that present participles in English have the same form as gerunds; the only verbal noun is the infinitive.
*There is a gérondif, formed with the clitic en and the present participle: "en faisant" means "by doing" or "while doing". Similarly, "en ayant fait" means "by having done".
There is a separate past participle: "fait" means "done". As in English, it can be used in the passive voice, in the perfect form, or on its own as an adjective. The past participle has no perfect, except arguably in the special surcomposé tense.
Tenses and aspects

Tenses and aspects of the indicative mood

The indicative mood has five "simple" tense-aspect forms, conveying four tenses and two aspects . The tense-aspect forms of the indicative mood in French are called the present, the simple past, the imperfect, the future, and the conditional. Note that, as discussed above, in some uses the conditional can be considered a separate mood completely, while in other uses it is the future-in-past tense of the indicative. The use of the various tense forms is described in the following table:

present	like in English, used to describe habitual, recurring, and "always" true events unlike in English, used to describe ongoing current action unlike in English, used to describe events that started in the past and affect the present sometimes used to describe upcoming events used in a protasis when the apodosis is in the future tense or imperative mood	« Les mardis, je joue au tennis. » « En ce moment, je joue au tennis. » « Il habite à Paris depuis 15 ans. » « Demain, je joue au tennis avec Marc. » « Si je joue au tennis avec vous mardi, jouerez-vous aux échecs avec moi mercredi ? »
simple past	used to describe past events in a perfective or aorist aspect; that is, with a sense of completion, with a definite beginning and end a literary tense that is rarely used in spoken language	« Et la lumière fut. » « Il naquit en 1930 et mourut en 1998. » « Hier, il plut. » « Il rangea la salle tandis qu'elle faisait la vaisselle. »
imperfect	used to describe past events or situations in an imperfective aspect; that is, ongoing, repetitive, or habitual past events or situations often used in conjunction with the simple or compound past to indicate an event that was ongoing while another took place used in a contrary-to-fact protasis often analogous to English past continuous or to the construction "used to do"	« Quand jétais jeune, jhabitais à Paris. » « Il rangea la salle tandis qu'elle faisait la vaisselle. » « Si je le savais, je te le dirais. »
simple future	used to describe future events mostly the same as in English, except that it is a simple tense in French	« Je le ferai demain. »
conditional	used in an apodosis when the protasis is contrary to fact used to describe a past event from the standpoint of an even-earlier event mostly the same as in English, except that it is a simple tense in French	« Si je le savais, je te le dirais. » « Ils disaient que je réussirais. »

Additionally, the indicative has five compound tense-aspect forms, each of which is formed analogously to the perfect in languages such as English as applied to one of the above simple tense forms. These tense forms are used to indicate events before the corresponding simple tense forms; for example, « À ce moment-là, il se souvint de ce qu'il avait promis ». In addition, except in literature or very formal speeches, the present perfect form is used in modern French wherever the simple past would have been used in older or more literary writing. Since this use is much more common than its use as a true present perfect, it is usually called the compound past. Further, where older or more literary French would have used the perfect form of the simple past tense for the past-of-the-past, modern non-literary French uses the pluperfect, or sometimes a new form called the surcomposé, which re-applies the perfect to the compound past, resulting in a structure like « Je lai eu fait ».
Unlike English or Spanish, French does not mark for a continuous aspect. Thus, "I am doing it" and "I do it" both translate to the same sentence in French: « Je le fais. » However, the distinction is often clear from context; and when not, it can be conveyed using periphrasis; for example, the expression être en train de is often used to convey the sense of a continuous aspect. In the case of the past tense, neither the simple nor the compound past tense is ever used with a continuous sense; therefore, the imperfect often indicates a continuous sense.
Similarly to English, the verb can be used as an auxiliary verb to create a near-future tense. Whereas English uses the continuous aspect, French uses the simple present tense; for example, the English sentence "I am going to do it tomorrow" would in French be « Je vais le faire demain ». As in English, this form can generally be replaced by the present or future tense: "I am doing it tomorrow", "I shall do it tomorrow", « Je le fais demain », « Je le ferai demain ».
Much like the use of to create a near-future tense, the verb can be used as an auxiliary verb to create a near-past tense. As in the near-future tense, the auxiliary verb is in the present tense. Unlike, needs the preposition de before the infinitive. Hence the English sentence "I did it a minute ago" would in French be « Je viens de le faire il y a une minute ».