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French is a moderately inflected language. Noun s and most pronouns are inflected for Number (singular or plural); Adjective s, for the number and Gender (masculine or feminine) of their nouns; Personal Pronoun s, for Person , number, gender, and Case ; and Verb s, for Mood , Tense , and the person and number of their Subjects . That said, case is primarily marked using Word Order and Preposition s, and certain verb features are marked using Auxiliary Verb s. VERBS ''Main article: French Verbs '' In French, as in English, a Verb is the controlling element in most sentences, although it is more common in French than in English for a sentence to have no verb. Verbs are conjugated to reflect the following information:
# The gerundive mood, perfect aspect, and passive and reflexive voices are not Synthetic . That is, there are not separate, one-word, conjugated forms that express these distinctions; rather, additional words modify the verb in order to convey them; see '' Periphrasis ''. Also, note that French's gerundive mood (''le gérondif'') is ''not'' analogous to the gerundive in certain other languages (such as Latin and Esperanto ). # In instruction, the preterite and imperfect tenses are sometimes called the ''preterite past tense'' and ''imperfect past tense'' to make clear that they generally correspond to the English past tense. Additionally, the preterite is often called the ''simple past tense'' to better reflect its French name, ''le passé simple''. # Some grammarians consider the conditional to be a distinct mood, rather than a tense of the indicative mood. There is no disagreement over the correct usage, only over the best classification. Verbs in the finite moods (indicative, imperative, and subjunctive) are also conjugated to Agree with their subjects in Person (first, second, or third) and Number (singular or plural), but as in English, the subject must be included in the indicative and subjunctive moods. In other words, French is neither a Null Subject Language nor a Pro-drop Language . NOUNS Every French Noun has a Grammatical Gender , either masculine or feminine. The grammatical gender of an animate noun 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 a ''chanteur'', while a female singer is a ''chanteuse''. In some cases, the two nouns are identical in form, with the difference only being marked in neighboring words (due to gender agreement; see The Section On Articles ); 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 (at least in "standard" French) ''professeur'' ("teacher") is always masculine, regardless of the sex of the person being referred to. 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 there are very many exceptions. More consistently, some endings, such as ''-tion'', occur almost exclusively on feminine nouns, while others, such as ''-eau'', occur almost exclusively on masculine ones. Nonetheless, a noun that seems masculine from its form might actually be feminine (e.g., ''souris'' — "mouse"), or less commonly, vice versa (e.g., ''squelette'' — "skeleton"). As with English, nouns are inflected for ). As with English, most uncountable nouns are grammatically treated as singular, though some are plural, such as ''les mathématiques'' (mathematics), and some nouns that are uncountable in English are countable in French, such as ''une information'' (a piece of information). Nouns in French are not inflected for Case or Person . (However, pronouns are; see The Section On Pronouns .) ARTICLES AND DETERMINERS ''Main article: French Articles And Determiners '' Articles and Determiner s agree in gender and number with the noun they determine; and, unlike with nouns, this inflection is made in speech as well as in writing. Perhaps for this reason, they are required in French much more often than in English: this enables nouns' genders and numbers to be reflected in speech. French has three articles: definite, indefinite, and partitive. The difference between the definite and indefinite articles is similar to that in English (definite: ''the''; indefinite: ''a'', ''an''), except that the indefinite article has a plural form (''~some''). The partitive article is similar to the indefinite article, but is used for uncountable nouns. ADJECTIVES An adjective agrees in gender and number with the noun it modifies. To make an adjective feminine, most simply add ''-e''; to make most adjectives plural, just add ''-s''. There are a few common exceptions: the feminine of ''-eux'' is ''-euse''; ''beau'' → ''belle''; ''-ien'' → ''-ienne''; ''-f'' → ''-ve''; etc. Most adjectives appear after the noun (''le vin rouge ''), but a small subset of common adjectives, frequently for ''beauty'', ''age'', ''goodness'', or ''size'' (BAGS) come before it: ''une '''belle''' femme'', ''un '''vieux''' camion'', ''une '''bonne''' bière'', ''un '''grand''' appartement''. For some adjectives, the meaning changes based on its position relative to the noun:
Many compound words contain an adjective: '' belle-mère'' (one word: "mother in law") vs. '' belle mère'' (two words: "beautiful mother"). Some of them use an Archaic form of the feminine adjective (without ''-e''): '' '''grand'''-route'', '' '''grand'''-mère'' (but ''une '''grande''' route'' "a long way", ''une '''grande''' mère'' "a tall mother"). ADVERBS ''Main article: French Adverbs '' As in English, Adverb s in French are used to modify adjectives, other adverbs, and verbs or clauses. Most adverbs are derived from an adjective by modifying its ending and adding the suffix ''-ment'' (analogous to the English suffix ''-ly''), though some adverbs are derived irregularly, and many do not derive from adjectives at all. Adverbs are invariable; that is, unlike nouns, verbs, and adjectives, they are not inflected in any way. PRONOUNS ''Main article: French Pronouns '' In French, Pronouns can be inflected to indicate their role in a clause (subject, direct object, etc.), as well as the person, gender, and number of their referrent. Not all of these inflections may be present at once; for example, the Relative Pronoun ''que'' (''that'', ''which'', ''whom'') may have any referrent, while the Possessive Pronoun ''le mien'' (''mine'') may have any role in a clause. As noted above, French - like English - is a non-pro-drop ("pronoun-dropping") language; therefore, pronouns feature prominently in the language. Impersonal verbs (e.g., ''pleuvoir'' — ''to rain'') use the impersonal pronoun ''il'' (analogous to English ''it''). The French object pronouns are all Clitic s, and some appear so consistently - especially in everyday speech - that some have commented that French could almost be considered to demonstrate Polypersonal Agreement . NEGATION French has a two part negation, consisting of the ''ne'' particle, which signifies a global negation, preceding the verb, and one of several other words following the verb, clarifying the type of negation:
Examples:
In colloquial French it is common to drop the ''ne'' in fast speech, although this can create some ambiguity with the ''ne...plus'' construction, as ''plus'' can mean either "more" or "not anymore." Generally when ''plus'' is used to mean "more", the final "s" is pronounced, while it is never pronounced when used to mean "not any more". So the informal sentence "Il y en a plus" can be pronounced with the final "s" to mean "There is more", or without to mean "There is none left". It is also common in literary style to omit the ''pas'' when the construction is of the ''ne...pas'' form with the verbs ''vouloir'' and ''pouvoir'' ("to want", "to be able to"). Examples with “I don't know”:
WORD ORDER
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