French grammar


French grammar is the set of rules by which the French language creates statements, questions and commands. In many respects, it is quite similar to that of the other Romance languages.
French is a moderately inflected language. Nouns and most pronouns are inflected for number ; adjectives, for number and gender of their nouns; personal pronouns and a few other pronouns, for person, number, gender, and case; and verbs, for tense, aspect, mood, and the person and number of their subjects. Case is primarily marked using word order and prepositions, while certain verb features are marked using auxiliary verbs.

Verbs

Verbs in French are conjugated to reflect the following information:
Some of these features are combined into seven tense–aspect–mood combinations. The simple forms are commonly referred to as the present, the simple past or preterite, the imperfect, the future, the conditional, the present subjunctive, and the imperfect subjunctive. However, the simple past is rarely used in informal French, and the imperfect subjunctive is rarely used in modern French.
Verbs in the finite moods are also conjugated to agree with their subjects in person and number. As in English, the subject must be included ; in other words, unlike other Romance languages, French is neither a null-subject nor a pro-drop language.
Auxiliary verbs are combined with past participles of main verbs to produce compound tenses, including the compound past. For most main verbs the auxiliary is avoir, but for reflexive verbs and certain intransitive verbs the auxiliary is a form of être. The participle agrees with the subject when the auxiliary is être, and with a preceding direct object when the auxiliary is avoir. Forms of être are also used with the past participles of transitive verbs to form the passive voice.
The imperative mood, which only has first-person plural and second-person singular and plural forms, usually has forms similar or identical to the corresponding ones in the present indicative.

Nouns

The pronoun and the pronominal group

The pronoun varies in gender, in number, and sometimes also in person. It always takes on the meaning of the word or group of words it replaces. This function is expressed by its name: pro-noun meaning that which is “for,” “put in the place of” a noun.
Its meaning also depends on the extralinguistic context, or on the textual context. The meaning of the cataphoric pronoun “this one,” on the other hand, depends either on the context or on the word to which it refers.
The syntactic characteristics of the pronoun are identical to those of the noun, which the pronoun can replace in the sentence.

Gender

Every French noun has a grammatical gender, either masculine or feminine. The grammatical gender of a noun referring to a human usually corresponds to the noun's natural gender. For such nouns, there will very often be one noun of each gender, with the choice of noun being determined by the natural gender of the person described; for example, a male singer is un chanteur, while a female singer is either une chanteuse or une cantatrice. A plural noun that refers to both males and females is masculine. In some cases, the two nouns are identical in form, with the difference only being marked in neighbouring words ; a Catholic man is un catholique, while a Catholic woman is une catholique. Nonetheless, there are some such nouns that retain their grammatical gender regardless of natural gender; personne 'person' is always feminine, while professeur 'teacher' is always masculine. In Canadian French, une professeure is the standard feminine form, which is becoming more and more common in European French.
A noun's gender is not perfectly predictable from its form, but there are some trends. As a very broad trend, nouns ending in -e tend to be feminine, while the rest tend to be masculine, but it sometimes can be the opposite. More consistently, some endings, such as -sion, -tion, -aison, -ité and -logie occur almost exclusively with feminine nouns, while others, such as -aire, -isme, -ème and -ège occur almost exclusively with masculine ones. Many nouns ending in -e preceded by double consonants are also masculine. Nonetheless, a noun that seems masculine judging by its ending might actually be feminine e.g., la peau 'the skin', une dent 'a tooth' or vice versa e.g., le coude 'the elbow', un squelette 'a skeleton' are masculine. Noun clauses are masculine.
A very small number of nouns can be used either in masculine or feminine gender with the same meaning. Often one gender is preferred over the other. Some nouns change gender according to the way they are used: the words amour 'love' and délice 'pleasure' are masculine in singular and feminine in plural; the word orgue 'organ' is masculine, but when used emphatically in plural to refer to a church organ it becomes feminine ; the plural noun gens 'people' changes gender in a very unusual way, being usually masculine but triggering feminine agreement when certain adjectives precede the word.
Other nouns change meaning depending on which grammatical gender they are used in. For example, le critique refers to a critic, while la critique means criticism; le livre refers to a book, while la livre means the pound. Similarly, le voile means "veil", whereas la voile means "sail".
The vocabulary of French includes many homophones, i.e., pairs of words with different spellings but the same pronunciation. Grammatical gender, however, may serve to distinguish some of these. For example, le pot 'the pot' and la peau 'the skin' are both pronounced but disagree in gender.

Number

As in English, nouns inflect for number.
Orthographically, the plural is usually formed from the singular by adding the letter -s. Nouns ending in -au, -eu, and -ou often take the ending -x instead. However, the endings -s and -x are in most cases not pronounced, meaning that in speech the plural form of a noun generally has the same pronunciation as the singular. Nouns that end in -s, -x or -z in the singular are left unchanged in the plural in both pronunciation and spelling.
Liaison between a plural noun and a following adjective is one case where the plural ending -s or -x may be pronounced: des fenêtres ouvertes . However, this form of liaison usually only appears in careful formal speech. In most everyday speech singular and plural forms of most nouns are therefore homophonous in all contexts.
In spoken French, the plurality of most nouns is marked not on the form of the noun itself but by a preceding article or determiner.
French nouns whose spoken plural forms are distinguished from the singular include most of those ending in -al, whose plural form is -aux, as well as a few nouns ending in -ail that also follow this pattern. Three nouns form completely irregular plurals: aïeul > aïeux 'ancestors' ; ciel > cieux 'heavens' ; and œil > yeux 'eyes', des œils-de-perdrix 'calluses' ). Three other nouns have regular plurals in spelling but have irregular pronunciations: bœuf > bœufs 'oxen, cattle'; œuf > œufs 'eggs'; and os > os 'bones'.
As with English, most uncountable nouns are grammatically treated as singular, though some are plural, such as les mathématiques 'mathematics'; some nouns that are uncountable in English are countable in French, such as une information 'a piece of information'.

Case

Nouns in French are not inflected for any other grammatical categories.

Articles and determiners

and determiners agree in gender and number with the noun they determine; unlike with nouns, this inflection is made in speech as well as in writing.
French has three articles: definite, indefinite, and partitive. The difference between the definite and indefinite articles is similar to that in English, except that the indefinite article has a plural form. The partitive article is similar to the indefinite article but used for uncountable singular nouns.

Adjectives

An adjective must agree in gender and number with the noun it modifies. French adjectives therefore have four forms: masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural, and feminine plural. A few adjectives have a fifth form, viz. an additional masculine singular form for use in liaison before a noun beginning with a vowel or a "mute h", e.g. un beau jardin, un bel homme, une belle femme, de beaux enfants, de belles maisons. This fifth form, which is older, is sometimes used elsewhere in set phrases, e.g. Philippe le Bel vs. Philippe le Beau.
The masculine singular, an adjective's basic form, is listed in dictionaries. The feminine singular is normally formed by adding -e to the basic form. This -e is silent, which makes many masculine and feminine forms homophonous. However, the ending causes "mute" final sounds to be pronounced, whereby masculine-feminine pairs become distinguishable in pronunciation if the masculine form ends in a mute consonant, which is the case with a great deal of adjectives. Under certain circumstances, other minor changes occur in the formation of feminine forms, such as the placement of an accent, the doubling of a consonant, or its replacement with another, changes that often reflect the pronunciation of such endings. Irregular feminine forms include beau > belle 'beautiful', blanc > blanche 'white', and a limited number of others. If an adjective's basic form ends in -e, it is left unchanged in the feminine.
The plural is normally formed by adding -s to the singular. This -s is usually mute, but pronounced in liaison with a following noun that begins with a vowel. Unlike liaison after plural nouns, liaison after plural adjectives is common and even obligatory in standard usage. If the basic form ends in -s, -x, or -z, an adjective is left unchanged in the masculine plural. A few adjectives take the ending -x in the masculine plural. Plural forms that are distinguishable from the singular outside of liaison environments occur only with adjectives ending in -al. These normally have -aux in the masculine plural. By contrast, the feminine plural is formed according to the general rule: centrale > centrales.
Due to the aforementioned rules, French adjectives might have four distinguished written forms which are all pronounced the same. This is the case if an adjective's masculine and feminine forms are homophonous and if there is no liaison between the adjective and a following noun.
Written formPronunciationTranslation
masc. sg.un prince turca Turkish prince
fem. sg.une princesse turquea Turkish princess
masc. pl.des princes turcsTurkish princes
fem. pl.des princesses turquesTurkish princesses

On the other hand, if the masculine and feminine forms have different pronunciations and liaison does occur, all four forms can be distinguishable in pronunciation. Adjective declension is therefore important in spoken French, though to a lesser extent than in writing.
Written formPronunciationTranslation
masc. sg.un grand empereura great emperor
fem. sg.une grande impératricea great empress
masc. pl.de grands empereursgreat emperors
fem. pl.de grandes impératricesgreat empresses

Due to the peculiar orthography of French, which denotes mute final consonants, most feminine forms seem regular in terms of their spelling because they are formed by adding -e to the masculine form, e.g., grand > grande, lent > lente, persan > persane. However, if we put this etymologic orthography aside and consider only current pronunciation, the formation of French female forms becomes quite irregular with several possible "endings": >, >, >.
Most adjectives, when used attributively, appear after their nouns: le vin rouge. A number of adjectives, come before their nouns: une belle femme. With a few adjectives of the latter type, there are two masculine singular forms: one used before consonants, and one used before vowels. For example, the adjective beau changes form from un beau garçon to un bel homme. Some adjectives change position depending on their meaning, sometimes preceding their nouns and sometimes following them. For example, ancien means "former" when it precedes its noun, but "ancient" when it follows it. To give another example, un homme grand means "a tall man", whereas un grand homme means "a great man".
Many compound words contain an adjective, such as une belle-mère "a mother-in-law", which is distinct from une belle mère "a beautiful mother". Some of them use an archaic form of the feminine adjective that lacks the final -e. These used to be written with an apostrophe, but a hyphen is now considered more correct: une grand-route "a main country road", which is distinct from une grande route "a long way", and une grand-mère "a grandmother", which is distinct from une grande mère "a tall mother".