Auxiliary Verbs, auf französisch, part deux

Last time, we took a very brief look at the general structure of the French verbal system. Let’s now take a gander at the auxiliaries! (For that was the whole point of this, n’est-ce pas?) 

Instead of getting bogged down in hypothetical forms, let’s start by looking at the compound tenses of the verb parler. Paralleling English, the structure of this construction is avoir + past participle (with the word avoir colored dark green to show that it is the auxiliary verb and not the usual verb avoir that means “to have”). We can conjugate the verb avoir in every tense and mood that we can conjugate parler in; these compound tenses have different names. To keep things simple, let’s just look at the first person singular I speak in all its various forms in French.

• présent de l’indicatif
• simple: je parle
• compound (passé composé): j’ai parlé
• présent du subjonctif
• simple: (que) je parle
• compound (passé du subjonctif): (que) j’aie parlé
• passé simple
• simple: je parlai
• compound (passé antérieur): j’eus parlé
• imparfait de l’indicatif
• simple: je parlais
• compound (plus-que-parfait de l’indicatif): j’avais parlé
• imparfait du subjonctif
• simple: (que) je parlasse
• compound (plus-que-parfait du subjonctif): (que) j’eusse parlé
• futur
• simple: je parlerai
• compound (futur antérieur): j’aurai parlé
• conditionnel
• simple: je parlerais
• compound (passé première forme): j’aurais parlé

We can arrange the tenses in the indicative mood in the following temporal sequence:

• Past context (with no necessary temporal distinction between the imparfait and passé simple) 
• j’avais parlé — I had been speaking / j’eus parlé — I had spoken
• je parlais — I was speaking / je parlai — I spoke
• Present context
• j’ai parlé — I have spoken
• je parle — I speak / am speaking
• Future context
• j’aurai parlé — I will have spoken
• je parlerai — I will speak

Up to this point, things are not very different from English. However, things are about to get a lot more complicated. This is because French also allows the verb être to function as an auxiliary verb in some specific cases:

• when the main verb is an intransitive verb of motion or of change of state
• but then sometimes these verbs can end up with avoir if they’re then used transitively!
• when the main verb is a reflexive or a reciprocal verb.

This is trickier than English, certainly, but not yet insurmountable. For if we just had a list of verbs that took être as the auxiliary verb, we would be fine. Alas, one more wrinkle: in the construction être + past participle, the past participle must agree with the subject of the verb. 

So let’s take the verb partir (“to leave”) and conjugate it in the first-person singular. (Since I’m male, I will use the masculine singular form of the past participle of partir, which is simply parti. If I were female, I would use partie, and if I were instead conjugating the verb in the first-person plural, I would use partis.)

• présent de l’indicatif
• simple: je pars
• compound (passé composé): je suis parti
• présent du subjonctif
• simple: (que) je parte
• compound (passé du subjonctif): (que) je sois parti
• passé simple
• simple: je partis
• compound (passé antérieur): je fus parti
• imparfait de l’indicatif
• simple: je partais
• compound (plus-que-parfait de l’indicatif): j’étais parti
• imparfait du subjonctif
• simple: (que) je partisse
• compound (plus-que-parfait du subjonctif): (que) je fusse parti
• futur
• simple: je partirai
• compound (futur antérieur): je serai parti
• conditionnel
• simple: je partirais
• compound (passé première forme): je serais parti

This is what we get. But we’re not yet done. There are still a few murky pools to wade through before reaching the shores of clarity.

The full verbs être and avoir

As in English, the two non-modal auxiliary verbs used in French are also independent, fully functional verbs. This means that they too can take an auxiliary verb in order to generate a compound tense. The past participle of avoir is eu, and that of être is été. For whatever reason, both these verbs take the auxiliary avoir, so that, for example, the sentence j’ai une voiture (“I have a car”) becomes j’aurai eu une voiture in the futur antérieur and j’eusse eu une voiture in the plus-que-parfait du subjonctif. 

With être as a full verb, things look a little more interesting. We say Jacques est heureux for “Jack is happy” and Marie est heureuse for “Marie is happy”; it is clear that the adjective has to agree in gender and number with the subject. However, because être takes avoir as its auxiliary, the participle été remains unchanged. Thus, in the plus-que-parfait du subjonctif (I pick this only because this strikes me as being perhaps the most recondite of French verbal forms!) these two sentences become Jacques eût été heureux and Marie eût été heureuse, respectively.