Language Structures and Phonology
Domain overview
Grammar items test control of the verb system, pronoun order, agreement, determiners and sentence-level syntax, plus a smaller set of phonology items covering liaison, nasal vowels, elision and intonation.
Verb system
- Passé composé agreement: with être the participle agrees with the subject (elle est partie); with avoir it agrees only with a preceding direct object (les lettres que j'ai écrites).
- Subjunctive after necessity, emotion, doubt and certain conjunctions: il faut que, bien que, avant que, pour que - but espérer que and parce que take the indicative.
- Sequence of tenses: si + présent → futur; si + imparfait → conditionnel; si + plus-que-parfait → conditionnel passé.
- Depuis with the present for an action still continuing: « J'habite ici depuis trois ans. »
Pronouns and determiners
Order is me/te/se/nous/vous → le/la/les → lui/leur → y → en: « Il me le donne. » In the affirmative imperative the pronoun follows the verb with a hyphen: « Donne-le-moi. » The partitive becomes de after negation: « Je n'ai pas de pain. »
Phonology
Nasal vowels: /ɑ̃/ (an, en), /ɔ̃/ (on), /ɛ̃/ (in, ain), /œ̃/ (un, brun, merging with /ɛ̃/ in much Parisian speech). Liaison is obligatory between determiner and noun (les_amis) and forbidden before h aspiré (les héros).
Worked example
« Elle s'est lavé les mains » versus « Elle s'est lavée. » In the first, les mains is a direct object placed after the verb, so the participle stays invariable. In the second, no direct object follows, so the reflexive pronoun is the direct object and agreement applies.
Traps
Après que traditionally takes the indicative, not the subjunctive; croire que and penser que switch to the subjunctive in the negative and interrogative.