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French grammar refers to the Grammar of the French Language , which is similar to that of the other Romance Languages . 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 . Case is primarily marked using Word Order and Preposition s, and certain verb features are marked using Auxiliary Verb s. VERBS See Also: 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:
# In some of its uses, the conditional acts as a tense of the indicative mood; in other uses, including the use from which it takes its name, it acts as a distinct mood. # The gerundive mood, perfect aspect, and passive and reflexive voices are not Synthetic ; that is, they are expressed using multi-word verb forms. # The preterite and imperfect are sometimes called, somewhat redundantly, the ''preterite past'' and ''imperfect past''. The preterite is also called the ''simple past'', a translation of its French name (''le passé simple''). Verbs in the finite moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and conditional) 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 except in the imperative mood. 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 a noun referring to a human or other mammal usually corresponds to the noun's natural gender (i.e., its referent's Sex or 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 Below ); 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 ''-sion'' and ''-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"). Some (rare) nouns may have both genders, and can be used either in masculine or in feminine with the same meaning, although often a gender is to be preferred to the other. Some (very rare) nouns change gender according to the way they are used: the words ''amour'' and ''délice'' ("love" and "delight, 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 name ''gens'' ("people") changes gender in a very unusual way, depending on the adjectives that are used with it. 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 any other grammatical categories. (However, personal pronouns are inflected Case and Person ; see Below .) ARTICLES AND DETERMINERS See Also: 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. The adjective's masculine singular form is its default form; this is the form listed in dictionaries, and is typically the form used when the adjective is used as a noun. Most adjectives' feminine singular forms are formed from their masculine singular forms by adding ''-e'', though some common endings have different patterns; adjectives ending in ''-eux'', for example, typically have feminine singular forms ending in ''-euse''. Similarly, most adjectives' masculine and feminine plural forms are formed from their corresponding singular forms by adding ''-s'', though sometimes ''-x'' is added instead, and nothing is added if the corresponding singular form already ends in ''-s'', ''-x'', or ''-z''. Most adjectives, when used attributively, appear after their nouns: ''le vin rouge'' ("the '''red''' wine"). A number of adjectives, however (often, but not always, having to do with beauty, age, goodness, or size, a tendency summarized by the acronym "BAGS"), come before their nouns: ''une '''belle''' femme'' ("a '''beautiful''' woman"). With a few adjectives of the latter type, there are two masculine singular forms: one used before consonants (the default form), and one used before vowels. For example, the adjective ''beau'' ("beautiful") changes form from ''un '''beau''' garçon'' ("a '''handsome''' boy") to ''un '''bel''' homme'' ("a '''handsome''' man"). 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. Many compound words contain an adjective, such as ''belle-mère'' ("mother-in-law"; distinct from ''belle mère'', "beautiful mother"). Some of them use an Archaic form of the feminine adjective that lacks the final ''-e'', such as '''''grand'''-route'' ("main country road"; distinct from '''''grande''' route'', "long way") and '''''grand'''-mère'' ("grandmother"; distinct from '''''grande''' mère'', "tall mother"). ADVERBS See Also: 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 See Also: 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 referent. Not all of these inflections may be present at once; for example, the Relative Pronoun ''que'' (''that'', ''which'', ''whom'') may have any referent, 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 usually expresses negation in two parts, with the Particle ''ne'' attached to the verb, and one or more negative words that modify the verb or one of its Argument s. For example, simple verbal negation is expressed by ''ne'' before the finite verb (and any object pronouns) and the adverb ''pas'' after the finite verb:
Other negative words are used in combination with ''ne'' to express more complex types of negation.
Examples:
The negative adverbs (and ''rien'') follow finite verbs but precede infinitives (along with ''ne''):
Several negative words (other than ''pas'') can appear in the same sentence, but the sentence is still usually interpreted as a simple negation. When another negative word occurs with ''pas'', a double negation interpretation arises.
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". In certain, mostly literary constructions, ''ne'' can express negation by itself (without ''pas'' or another negative word). This is possible with certain verbs (e.g. ''pouvoir'', ''savoir'', ''oser'').
EXPLETIVE ''NE'' In certain cases, the word ''ne'' can be used without signifying negation; the ''ne'' in such instances is known as expletive ''ne'' (French: ''ne explétif): :« J'ai peur que cela ne se reproduise. » — "I am afraid that it might happen again." :« Il est arrivé avant que nous n'ayons commencé. » — "He arrived before we started." :« Ils sont plus nombreux que tu ne le crois. » — "There are more of them than you think." Expletive ''ne'' is found in finite subordinate clauses (never before an infinitive). It is characteristic of literary rather than colloquial style.1 The following contexts allow expletive ''ne'':
WORD ORDER The components of a clause are typically arranged in the following order (though not all components are always present):
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