With Lingolia Plus you can access 17 additional exercises about Le plus-que-parfait, as well as 624 online exercises to improve your French. It is used in the sense of “each other” for these verbs.
This is because the reflexive pronoun is an indirect object. The participe passé does not agree with the subject of the following verbs: se téléphoner to phone each other, se parler to talk to each other, se mentir to lie to each other, se plaire (complaire/déplaire) to like each other, se sourire to smile at each other, se rire to laugh at each other, se nuire to hurt each other, se succéder to succeed each other, se suffire to be enough, se ressembler to look like each other, s’en vouloir to be annoyed with each other. → se = indirect object ( téléphoné à qui? – who did they call?) Marie and Laurent had called each other on the phone. Remember: the participe passé never agrees with an indirect object.Įxample: Marie et Laurent s’étaient téléphoné. The exception to this concerns direct objects: the participle does not agree if the reflexive verb is followed by a direct object.
Example: À quelle heure étais -tu sorti ce matin-là ? What time had you left that morning? no direct object, sortir = leave but: Avais-tu sorti les carottes du frigo hier soir ? Had you taken the carrots out of the fridge yesterday evening? direct object: les carottes, sortir = take out Participe passé: the past participleįor the regular - er/- ir/-re verbs, the participe passé is easy to construct: In this case, the meaning of the verb often changes. We use avoir when descendre, (r)entrer, (re)monter, retourner and sortir are followed by a direct object. I had gone to Brittany on holiday.Ĭheck out our page on avoir/être to pick up some tips on remembering which verbs take être as their auxiliary in the compound tenses.
Most verbs construct the plus-que-parfait using avoir, however être is used as the auxiliary verb in the following cases:
Example: Je ne m’étais pas trompé dans mon calcul. I had left.→ I had not left.įor reflexive verbs, the reflexive pronoun comes after the first part of the negation (ne) and before the auxiliary verb (avoir/être). In negative sentences, the past participle comes after the second part of the negation (pas).