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Downtime learning french Je m’appelle…
| Je m’appelle… |
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| Friday, 12 October 2007 | |
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S’appeler is probably one of the first
verbs we learn in French, and
beginners are often amused or
puzzled by the fact that in French we
have to say je m’appelle Jean (I call
myself Jean) rather than “I’m Jean”.
S’appeler, s’asseoir, se coucher, se
réveiller, se lever, se laver, s’habiller, se
promener… are all reflexive verbs, ie,
actions one does to oneself. It is worth
noting that English often doesn’t
require an explicit reflexive marker
(myself, himself etc) if the meaning can
be inferred: I wash before breakfast
(we’d never say ‘wash myself’). As is
so often the case, French is much more
explicit. Reflexive verbs are one of the three main types of pronominal verbs, along with reciprocal verbs and naturally pronominal (aka idiomatic) verbs. Pronominal simply means they are formed with pronouns. The main problems for learners are construction and agreement of the past participle. • Reflexive verbs We won’t dwell on these verbs too much (see list above); they are fairly straightforward. The past participle only agrees with the pronoun if the pronoun is the direct object (the latter is underlined in the following examples): Elle s’est lavée/couchée/levée/ promenée etc but elle s’est lavé les mains, elle s’est acheté une voiture etc. Also, if the direct object is not the pronoun, the participle only agrees with it if it precedes the pronoun: Ils se sont acheté une voiture, (they bought a car (for themselves), but la voiture qu’ils se sont achetée. • Reciprocal verbs These are actions people perform on each other or one another. Here French is more concise; we can’t avoid ‘each other’ or ‘one another’ in English: ils s’aiment (they like each other, or they are in love). Here, s’aimer is a reciprocal verb, but it can also be a reflexive verb: il s’aime (he likes himself). Like reflexive verbs, the past participle agrees with the direct object (noun or pronoun) if the latter precedes the verb. Ils se sont écrit (they wrote to each other, se is an indirect object), whereas Ils se sont embrassés – they kissed (‘each other’, or conceivably ‘one another’, very common practice in France!) • Naturally pronominal verbs The pronouns are an integral and inseparable part of these verbs: se souvenir (remember), se rendre (go), s’amuser (have fun), s’ennuyer (get bored), se marier (get married), se sentir (feel), se tromper (make a mistake), among many others. The past participle always agrees with the subject. The main difficulty here is that many naturally pronominal verbs are also transitive/intransitive verbs in their own right, often with completely different meanings, which can be the cause of some grammatical confusion. Examples: sentir (je sens une odeur de gaz – transitive verb, I can smell gas; je me sens mieux – I feel better, pronominal), entendre (il a entendu la voiture démarrer – transitive; ils se sont entendus d’emblée – they got on well right away). When such verbs take se (ie, are naturally pronominal), the meaning is quite different from a reflexive meaning; if ‘each other’ or ‘one another’ cannot be understood, then they are naturally pronominal. Another way to recognise them is to see if you can replace the verb with a (near-) synonym; if so, it is naturally pronominal: Jean s’est aperçu de son erreur (naturally pronominal, Jean realised his mistake = Jean a compris son erreur), but ils se sont aperçus au festival (they caught a glimpse of each other)… here, it’s a reciprocal verb). Finally, there is a group of pronominal verbs that have a truly passive meaning. As we saw last month, French tends to prefer pronominal forms (le relevé s’effectue… rather than le relevé est effectué) where in English we’d use the passive (meters are read…). Here the action is performed on, not by, the subject. You can usually rephrase these verbs with on + an active verb (on effectue le relevé…), and the se has no real function in the sentence. |
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