Infinitive? Past participle or conjugated verb?-French

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Infinitive? Past participle or conjugated verb?

Verbs in –é- past participle and infinitive of verbs in  –er-

After the auxiliaries ÊTRE or AVOIR the verb must be conjugated in the past participle form
(1^st group => é,ée,és, ées)

François est entré dans le magasin.   Il a acheté un pull.
Marie est entrée dans le magasin   Elle a acheté un pull.
François et Marie sont entrés dans le magasin.                    Ils ont acheté un pull.
Marie et sa sœur sont entrées dans le magasin.                    Elles ont acheté un pull.

Notice: You see from the previous examples that the past participle used with the auxiliary être always agrees in gender and in number with the subject,while used with the auxiliary avoir, it remains invariable. (Notice:the Past Participle, used with avoir, agrees with the direct object if and only if the latter is placed before it. )
Il a reçu une lettre, mais La lettre qu'il a reçue n'est pas ici.
After –à-, -de-, -pour-,- par-, … prépositions
the verb must always be conjugated in the infinitive form.

Philippe est en train de négocier avec Sophie pour l’accompagner au cinéma.

When 2 verbs follow each other the second one must be conjugated in the infinitive form.
Except after an auxiliary.

Après avoir joué,    Thierry pense réviser
                            Auxiliary + past participle.     2 following verbs.

The verbs for the Second-Person Plural

The Second-Person Plural of all verbs ends in EZ

Vous parlez              vous parliez             vous parlerez

Be careful when listening

Conjugated in some persons of the singular in the Imperfect, Historic Past, Conditional and Future forms ,
the conjugated verbs end in AI AIS AIT and are pronounced like the sound ' é '.
Pay attention to the meaning of the sentence and the tense which it refers to.

How to distinguish the past participle from the infinitive form ?

To know whether a verbal form is a past participle or an infinitive, we first replace it by a verb of the 2^nd or 3^rd group and then observe its effect on the sentence:

Les élèves ont travaillé.
We replace travaillé by the verb vendre for example :
Les élèves ont vendu.
We see that vendu is a past participle,
thus travaillé is a past participle too and will end  in « é ».

Les élèves se sont mis à travailler.
We replace travailler by the verb vendre for example :
Les élèves se sont mis à vendre.
We see that vendre is an infinitive,
thus travailler is an infinitive too and will end in « er ».

A piece of advice :

To differentiate between the past participle and the infinitive form it is always helpful to substitute the same verb each time and observe its effect on the sentence.
Personally I prefer the verb « vendre ».
In the previous examples,after the substitution, the discordant effect heard,makes it immediately clear that we cannot say
« les élèves se sont mis à VENDU ».
By substituting the same verb each time, the discordance is heard at once and thus, revealing the error. In this manner, you automatically make the right choice between the infinitive and the past participle without hesitation.

In the following exercise you have to find the right ending for each given verb.

–é-er-ez-ées-és- ??
Good luck

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Avant de jou dans le jardin, Paul s’est engag auprès de sa maman à rang sa chambre et à y retrouv toutes les chaussettes laiss par terre et éparpill un peu partout. Dehors, il entend ses copains l’appel et c’est l’air renfrogn qu’il se sent forc d’accomplir ce à quoi il s’est engag . Enfin, le travail est termin , la chambre est rang et chaque chose a retrouv sa place. Sans plus attendre, il descend jou avec ses camarades qui depuis une heure s’étaient égosill pour l’appel . Arrêt !!! J'arrive !

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