Thursday, June 11, 2009

Tomorrow is my french final exam and here i am doing nothing at all.

I gotta memorize these somehow...

USES OF THE IMPERFECT TENSE


The Imperfect tense is used in the following cases:
  • v Description in the past: La maison était énorme et avait trois fenêtres.
  • v Describing the weather at a time in the past: Il faisait très beau.
  • v Giving an opinion in the past, c'était + adjective: C'était magnifique.
  • v Talking about something that used to happen regularly in the past:Nous allions en France chaque année. On faisait du ski dans les Alpes.
  • v Talking about how things used to be over a period of time in the past: Mon père avait une voiture rouge et ma mère travaillait à l'hôpital.
  • v Making excuses: Ce n'était pas de ma faute. Je voulais aider!
  • v Saying what was happening, when something else happened; (one action (in the perfect tense) cuts across another on-going one (in the imperfect) Je lisais le journal quand mon père est entré dans le salon. Ma mère travaillait dans le jardin, quand le téléphone a sonné.

The Passé Composé

The passé composé (compound past tense), also referred to as the past indefinite, is made up of two parts, a helping verb and a past participle.

It is formed by using the present tense of the helping verb avoir ( j'ai, tu as, il/elle a, nous avons, vous avez, ils/elles ont) or être ( je suis, tu es, il/elle est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils/elles sont) and adding a past participle.

The passé composé with avoir

The past participle of regular verbs is formed by dropping the infinitive ending and adding for -er verbs, i for -ir verbs, and u for -re verbs. The past participles of irregular verbs must be memorized.

Past participles of verbs that use avoir as their helping verb agree in number and gender with a preceding direct-object noun or pronoun. This is done by adding an -e to indicate a feminine noun or pronoun and an -s to indicate a plural noun or pronoun. No -s is added to a participle that already ends in -s:

The passé composé with être

Only 17 verbs use être as their helping verb. These verbs generally, but not always, express motion or a change of place, state, or condition, such as going up, going down, going in, going out, or remaining. The verbs are:

When être is the helping verb, the past participle must agree in number and gender with the subject; this is done by adding -e for a feminine subject and -s for a plural subject:

Verbs that use être or avoir

The verbs descendre (to go down), monter (to go up), passer (to pass by), rentrer (to return home), retourner (to return), and sortir (to go out) generally use être as their helping verb. They may use avoir when the sentence contains a direct object. In these cases, their meaning changes: descendre (to take down), monter (to take up), passer (to spend time), rentrer (to bring in), retourner (to turn over), and sortir (to take out):

The passé composé with reflexive verbs

Reflexive verbs use être as their helping verb. When the reflexive pronoun is also the direct object, the past participle agrees with the reflexive pronoun. When the reflexive pronoun is the indirect object (and, thus, the direct object comes after the verb), there is no agreement of the past participle with the reflexive pronoun.

Negating in the passé composé

To negate a sentence in the passé composé, put the negative expression around the conjugated helping verb and any pronouns that precede it:

Questions in the passé composé

To form a question in the passé composé, invert the conjugated helping verb (with any pronouns related to it preceding it) with the subject pronoun, and add a hyphen. In general, avoid inverting with je; instead, use est-ce que to form the question. With avoir, a -t- must be added when the subject is il or elle. Negatives surround the hyphenated inverted forms:


Resources: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/CliffsReviewTopic/The-Pass-Compos.topicArticleId-25660,articleId-25631.html
italk.com/knowledge/contribution-limparfait.htm

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