Two expressions that are useful when situating activities in relation to one another in time are après avoir and après être. Both translate to ‘after having done something’ or ‘after doing something’ in English (Après avoir fait ses devoirs, il a joué avec son petit frère – After doing/having done his homework, he played with his little brother). While their usage is not too complicated, they are employed in slightly different grammatical environments which can make it tricky to differentiate between them. Understanding the difference involves getting a handle on the use of être and avoir with the passé composé.

Both expressions are followed by the past participle of the main verb (in the example above, ‘fait’ and ‘joué’ are the past participles of ‘faire’ and ‘jouer’ respectively). The past participle (henceforth abbreviated ‘pp’) agrees in gender and number with the entity (subject or object) to which it refers according to certain principles; as always, there are a few exceptions to note along the way.

ÊTRE

Knowing when to employ ‘après être’ over ‘après avoir’ involves knowing which verbs use être in the passé composé. These are your DRMRSVANDERTRAMP verbs and reflexive verbs.

Reflexive verbs always use être in the passé composé, no exceptions (reflexive verbs are used to describe actions one performs on oneself). E.g. ‘I brushed my teeth yesterday’ – ‘je me suis brossé les dents hier’.

Agreement rule 1: If a direct object is placed before the verb, then the pp agrees with it:

Après s’être lavée, Marie est sortie avec son copain – who/what did Marie wash? Herself. The reflexive pronoun se (appearing here as s’ because ‘être’ begins with a vowel) corresponds to ‘herself’ and is placed before the verb laver, therefore the pp needs to agree with it.

Agreement rule 2: If the direct object is placed after the verb, the pp does not agree with it:

Après s’être lavé les cheveux, Marie est sortie avec son copain – who/what did Marie wash? Her hair. Is hair (les cheveux) placed before or after the verb laver? After. Therefore, there is no agreement.

DRMRSVANDERTRAMP verbs are a bit trickier in that they can use either avoir or être depending on the meaning that is being sought.* When used with être, their meaning is similar to that of reflexive verbs (i.e. they denote an action been performed on oneself). When used with avoir, they describe an action been performed by one entity on another. Note the contrast in these examples:

Elle est descendue de la voiture – She got down from the car

Elle a descendu le capot de la voiture – She lowered the bonnet of the car

In the first example, she is lowering herself from the car, so ‘être’ is used and the pp agrees with ‘elle’. In the second example, she is lowering something else other than herself, so ‘avoir’ is used and the pp does not agree with ‘elle’.

Après être descendue de la voiture, elle se dirigeait vers la maison – After having gotten down from the car, she headed for the house (this can also be written as ‘after getting down from the car, she…’) – Agreement as per the reasoning above

Après avoir descendu le capot de la voiture, elle a vérifié l’état des pneus – After having closed the bonnet of the car, she checked the state of the tyres. Agreement rule 2 above applies here. The direct object le capot is placed after the verb descendre, therefore the pp does not agree with it (for a quick revision of direct objects and their pronouns, click here).

*About half of the DRMRSVANDERTRAMP verbs can only be employed with être in the passé composé. They are: revenir, aller, naître, partir, mourir, venir, arriver, devenir and rester. These are verbs that can only be employed intransitively (i.e. they cannot take an object). This makes sense since actions such as dying (mourir), being born (naître) and going somewhere (aller) can only occur with respect to one entity (he died, she was born, they went to school). They cannot be performed on another entity the way that actions like descendre and others can.

AVOIR

See ‘Être’ above for how the pp of DRMRSVANDERTRAMP verbs using ‘avoir’ agree.

Verbs that are not employed in a reflexive manner and are not DRMRSVANDERTRAMP verbs using être all use avoir by default in the passé composé (the only exception to this is the verb passer which can use both). In this case, the pp only agrees if a direct object precedes avoir in the form of a direct object pronoun:

Après les avoir vus dans le cinéma, Marc est allé à leur rencontre – After having seen them in the cinema, Marc went to meet them (here the pp ‘vu’ agress with the direct object ‘les’)

The pp of ‘faire’ is invariable when it is followed by the infinitive: Après les avoir fait cuire pendant quinze minutes, j’ai melangé les pâtes avec la sauce – After having cooked them for fifteen minutes, I mixed the pasta with the sauce (not ‘faites cuire’).

Key principle

When dealing with pp agreements, always ask yourself ‘to whom/what is the verb referring?’ In French, everything in a sentence revolves around the verb. If you can ascertain who is doing what, you will be a step closer to making the right choices in agreements. Go back to the examples (especially those of Marie) and see if you can deduce a logical reasoning pattern and apply the same principle to similar cases.

Après que can be used in place of ‘après avoir’ and ‘après être’, but it is somewhat less frequent especially in spoken French:

Après être partie en Asie, Nadya s’installait près de Taiwan – Après qu’elle est partie en Asie, Nadya s’installait près de Taiwan (After having left for Asia, Nadya settled close to Taiwan)

‘Après que’ is needed when introducing a subject other than the one already mentioned within the same sentence: Il invitait des amis chez lui après que sa mère est partie. Because there are two different entities here (il and sa mere), après avoir/après être would not make sense. Note that unlike avant que, ‘après que’ does not use the subjunctive.

To express an action that took place before another, use avant que or avant de. ‘Avant que’ is followed by the subjunctive, while ‘avant de’ is followed by the infinitive:

Avant d’aller à la plage, ils ont mis de la crème solaire – Before going to the beach, they put on sunscreen

Avant qu’ils soient allés à la plage, ils ont mis de la crème solaire

This is part 2 of a 2-part series on object pronouns. If you missed the first part, be sure to read it here before you continue.

Indirect object pronouns (henceforth IOPs, also known as POIs or pronom d’objet indirect in French) replace an indirect object. An indirect object is preceded by a preposition, and hence does not follow directly after the verb but instead is indirectly linked to it. In the example Je donne les pommes à Judy, ‘Judy’ is an indirect object because it is preceded by the preposition ‘à’. ‘Les pommes’ on the other hand is a direct object since it follows directly after the verb. So, in French, an IOP replaces ‘à + indirect object’.

A quick way to determine whether or not an object is indirect is to break down the structure of the phrase to its bare form, in this instance ‘donner quelque chose à quelqu’un’ (you can find these in the dictionary). We can see clearly now that the entity to whom the thing is given is indirect (à quelqu’un) while the thing itself is direct (quelque chose).

The IOPs in French are:

me → me

te → you

lui → him/her

nous → us

vous → you

leur → them

So, Je donne les pommes à Judy becomes Je lui donne les pommes.

In the passé composé, the past participle does not agree in gender and number with the IOP. E.g. J’ai donné les pommes à Judy → Je lui ai donné les pommes (no agreement even though ‘Judy’ refers to a feminine entity)

Because of word-order flexibility, prepositions associated with indirect objects can sometimes be omitted in English while still retaining the grammaticality of a phrase, but they are always required in French. ‘I gave the apples to Judy’ can also be written as ‘I gave Judy the apples’, but ‘J’ai donné Judy les pommes’ is grammatically incorrect.

Take note that some constructions using prepositions in English don’t employ them in French and vice versa. E.g. to wait for someone → attendre quelqu’un. In this example, the phrase uses a preposition ‘for’ in English, whereas the French equivalent does not. So in French it is direct whereas in English it is indirect. Be careful when translating these!

The ‘à’ in certain indirect expressions doesn’t always correspond to ‘to’ in English. Different prepositions may be used which could change the meaning of the expression. A good example is acheter qch à qn which means ‘to buy something from someone’. Another expression that follows the same pattern is emprunter qch à qn (to borrow something from someone). These tend to be in the minority. You can use a dictionary to find the correct preposition associated with an expression and what it translates to in English.

Order of DOPs and IOPs appearing together

You might be wondering what order DOPs and IOPs take when they appear together. The answer is a matter of grammatical person. In the third person (both singular and plural), the DOP is placed before the IOP. It is the reverse with all other persons.

E.g. I give it to him → Je le lui donne

He gives it to me → Il me le donne

This follows the same pattern in the passé composé:

I gave it to him → Je le lui ai donné

He gave it to you → Il te l’a donné  

Because of the presence of a DOP, the past participle will still agree with it in the passé composé:

J’ai donné la pomme à Judy → Je la lui ai donnée

Some expressions with the preposition ‘à’ don’t use IOPs (quelle surprise, right?) Instead, they use disjunctive pronouns (also known as stressed pronouns) or other pronouns like ‘y’. Penser à is an example of an expression which uses disjunctive pronouns:

Je pense à ma mère – Je pense à elle (not ‘Je lui pense’)

If the indirect object is a thing instead of a person (or animal), the pronoun ‘y’ is used instead of an IOP:

Je pense à mon avenir – J’y pense

Il croit à l’éducation – Il y croit

The concept of object pronouns seems to present a challenge for many students, which is unfortunate as we use pronouns an awful lot. The good news is that once you break down the terms and understand the principles underlying them, they are less troublesome than they first appear! This will be part 1 of a 2-part series on object pronouns.

To start with, let us interrogate Continue reading “Object Pronouns (DOPs)” →