French/Lessons/Adolescence

Pronominal verbs are verbs that include pronouns. These pronouns are, , , , and and are used as either direct objects or indirect objects, depending on the verb that they modify. When pronominal verbs are conjugated in perfect tenses, is used as the auxiliary verb. There are three types of pronominal verbs: reflexive verbs, reciprocal verbs, and naturally pronominal verbs.

Reflexive verbs
Reflexive verbs reflect the action on the subject:

Reflexive verbs can also be used as infinitives:

Either the conjugated verb or the infinitive can be negated, each with different meanings:

In perfect tenses, the past participles agree with the direct object pronoun, but not the indirect object pronoun, in gender and plurality. Therefore it would only agree when the reflexive pronoun is the direct object; the past participle does not agree with the direct object if it goes after the verb:

Reciprocal verbs
With reciprocal verbs, people perform actions to each other:

Like reflexive verbs, the past participle of reciprocal verbs agrees in number and gender with the direct object if it goes before the verb. It therefore agrees with all reciprocal pronouns that function as direct objects:

The reciprocal pronoun can also function as an indirect object without a direct object pronoun:

Naturally pronominal verbs
Some verbs are pronominal without performing a reflexive or reciprocal action:

In perfect tenses, these verbs agree with the direct object if it goes before the verb; otherwise, the past participle agrees with the subject:

The is used for past habitual actions, to set the scene:

The, as well as the , are used to express punctual actions:

This does not mean that the action had to happen over a very short time, but that it is understood as a single punctual event, now finished.

The will express a more general statement while the  will express a more precise action:

The is used when there are two occurrences in the past and one wants to symbolise that one occurrence happened before the other. In English, this is used in a phrase like I had given him the toy before he went to sleep. In this example, there are two past tenses, but they occur at different times. The can be used to indicate the occurrence of one before the other (essentially, the past before the past).

In French, the is formed by conjugating the auxiliary verb in the  and adding the past participle. So to conjugate in the, one finds the appropriate auxiliary verb , conjugates it  and finds the past participle of. So, the conjugation of in the  becomes  or, in English, I had eaten.