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The University of Western Ontario
Department of French
University College 138B

FR 002~002: Supplément de la grammaire

Les verbes du chapitre préliminaire

Again we have noticed that several verbs are introduced but not discussed in Chapitre préliminaire. These verbs are quite useful in the context of identifying people or objects, their names and how to spell them. They are:

écrire, s'écrire, épeler, s'épeler and être.

They are conjugated below:

There is much to be observed in these five verbs. First, we observe in the example of écrire another group of regular verbs the -re group: the verbs with infinitives ending in -re. The conjugation of these verbs is regular in that it is the same for ALL regular verbs of this same -re group (notice the same endings -s, -s, -t, -ons, -ez, -ent). The endings in red indicate that these endings are silent, therefore, the je, tu, il/elle, and ils/elles forms sound exactly the same. The verb épeler is a 'stem changing' 1st group-er verb very much like the verb appeler that we examined last week. The conjugation of these verbs is regular in that it is the same for ALL regular verbs of this same -er group (notice the same endings -e, -es, -e, -ons, -ez, -ent). The endings in red indicate that these endings are silent, therefore, the je, tu, il/elle, and ils/elles forms sound exactly the same.

*Differently from last weeks examples when the particle se is added the meaning or action of the verb is changed vastly. These verbs are not reflexive verbs like last week but passive verbs, their action is directed to an unidentified agent rather than towards a specific object or redirected towards the subject as we saw for reflexives. The subject is then restricted to objects that are spellable and the paradigm is reduced to the 3rd person sinular form.

Like appeler last week, the verb épeler demonstrates a word-medial spelling change (the -l doubles -ll) or "stem-change" and a contracted form (m', t', s'). These phenomena will also be examined more thoroughly later in this course. Can you discern the rules through observation?

Finally, the verb être is an example of a fully irregular verb. Its conjugation follows no regular pattern and must simply be memorised. We will see several others during the course.