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Constructing Passé Composé

The Basics of Auxiliary Verbs and Past Participles

Jun 15, 2008

Mastering the basics of constructing passé composé is key to using this past tense. This article explain the basic rules and provide guidelines.

Passé composé is maybe the most confusing tense of all French verbs. What with those auxiliary verbs and the past participles always changing, it is hard for a learner to get his bearings.

The Auxiliary Verbs

Passé composé is always formed with two verbs, an auxiliary verb, être or avoir, and of the verb itself, the past participle or participe passé. Therefore, to construct any passé composé, it is necessary to know how to conjugate the two auxiliary verbs in the present tense. There are no tricks or rules presiding to the conjugating of those two verbs. Memorizing them is key:

Être/ Avoir
Je suis /J’ai
Tu es/ Tu as
Il/Elle est/ Il/Elle a
Nous sommes/ Nous avons
Vous êtes /Vous avez
Ils/Elles sont /Ils/Elles ont

Once these verbs are memorized, the real work starts. First, it is essential to know when to use each of those auxiliary verbs. Only a limited number of verbs are conjugated with être when constructing passé composé. Most verbs using the auxiliary verb être are verbs of passage, verbs that will take you from one point to another.

This story of a very busy house can help one remember which verb to use. All verbs used here are verbs conjugated in passé composé with être:

Someone entered the house (entrer, je suis entré) and someone left (sortir, je suis sorti)
In the driveway someone, arrived (arriver, je suis arrivé) and another person departed (partir, je suis parti)
Someone went out to the backyard (aller, je suis allé), while someone else returned into the house (retourner, je suis retourné)
Inside, someone went up the stairs (monter, je suis monté) and passed by (passer, je suis passé) someone who was going down the stairs. (descendre, je suis descendu). Some one else fell down the stairs (tomber, je suis tombé)
A friend came earlier but there was no one home (venir, je suis venu). He came back (revenir, je suis revenue). He stayed a while. (rester, je suis resté) and became restless (devenir, je suis devenu.)
Finally, somewhere in the world, someone was born (naître, je suis né) and someone died (mourir, je suis mort).

Remembering this little story will help the learner decide which auxiliary verb to use. Other verbs are conjugated using auxiliary verb avoir.

The Past Participles

Past participles are strange little beasts. While there is a rule to forming past participle, there are many exceptions that break the rule… However, the rule will be helpful, so here it goes:

Past participles are formed by using the stem of the verb and adding the appropriate ending (é, i, u, ert, is, it, etc).

Ok. Concretely what does that mean?

Well, most verbs have a stem. Put simply, the stem is the part of the verb that never changes, no matter how it is conjugated.

Aimer=aim
Finir=fin
Sortir=sort
Danser=dans

Once the stem has been isolated, the next step is to add the correct ending. The different endings for the verbs in their infinitive form will come in handy here:

Verbs ending in er: é
Verbs ending in ir: i, is, it
Verbs ending in re: ert, u

But, as mentioned earlier there are quite a few exceptions and as with every exception there is no magic rule or law to help. It might be helpful to remember that most exceptions can be found in the group of verbs ending with RE and some on the groups ending in IR.

Once these two concepts have been mastered, it will become easier to use passé composé. However, without a throughout understanding of those basic concept, the learner will struggle while constructing this past tense.

The copyright of the article Constructing Passé Composé in Learning French is owned by Valerie Lizotte. Permission to republish Constructing Passé Composé in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.