Main verbs and auxiliary verbs in French (2 hours)

↵ Back to module homepage

When we examined English, we learned three key differences between main verbs and auxiliary verbs:

  1. Auxiliary verbs can have adverbs immediately after them (e.g. He is often angry) but main verbs can't, if the adverb would separate the main verb from its object (*He eats often pie).
  2. Auxiliary verbs can have negation after them (e.g. He is not angry) but main verbs can't (*He eats not pie).
  3. Auxiliary verbs can move to the beginning of a sentence (e.g.Is he angry?) but main verbs can't (*Eats he pie?).

In this activity, we will look at similar sentences in French, to see whether the same rules hold.

You don't need to know French, because I provide translations of all the sentences we are working with.

Adverbs

Here are the French versions of the two sentences we're interested in. I am presenting each sentence in the typical format used in syntax analysis: the first line shows the French sentence, the second line shows a word-by-word "interlinear gloss" (basically just a word-by-word translation), and the third line shows the natural-sounding English equivalent. I am of course oversimplifying some details of the translation (e.g., de la tarte is a multi-word phrase but I'm just translating it as "pie"), but they are details which are not important to our current analysis.

Now the big question is, where can we put adverbs in these? Where can we put "often"? Here are the sentences with an adverb added:

Is there a difference here between how French works and how English works? (Hint: you can look back at the rules mentioned at the top of this activity for English; or you can just look to see if there are any places where the "natural" English translation does not appear to match the word-by-word gloss.)

When you figure out the difference, keep it in mind; later in this activity I will ask you to describe it. For now, let's just move on to examine the next thing.

Negation

Here are the same French sentences again:

Now the big question is, where can we put negation in these? Where can we put "not"? Here are the sentences that have been negated:

Is there a difference here between how French works and how English works? (Hint: you can look back at the rules mentioned at the top of this activity for English; or you can just look to see if there are any places where the "natural" English translation does not appear to match the word-by-word gloss.)

When you figure out the difference, keep it in mind; later in this activity I will ask you to describe it. For now, let's just move on to examine the next thing.

Forming questions

Here are the same French sentences again.

Now the big question is, how can we turn these into questions? Here are the sentences that have been turned into questions. (You will notice a -t- gets added when forming one of the questions, but this is just a phonological change, it has nothing to do with the syntax, and the -t- doesn't mean anything.)

Is there a difference here between how French works and how English works? (Hint: you can look back at the rules mentioned at the top of this activity for English; or you can just look to see if there are any places where the "natural" English translation does not appear to match the word-by-word gloss.)

When you're ready, continue on to the activity below to put these facts together into a conclusion.

Summarize how French works differently from English, in terms of main verbs and auxiliary verbs.

Again, I'm not looking for a "correct", "official" answer here, so don't consult other sources. I just want to see how you personally understand the examples we just reviewed.

When you have finished these activities, continue to the next section of the module: "Bringing it all together: Verbs and the IP in Chinese".

by Stephen Politzer-Ahles. Last modified on 2021-04-23. CC-BY-4.0.