Talk:French verb morphology

Translation details

 * Articles: see User:Poccil/French grammar
 * Worth doing because: Will complement French grammar
 * Originally requested by: Peter O. (Talk) 23:37, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)
 * Status: unclaimed
 * Other notes: fr:Morphologie_du_verbe_français ==> Morphology of the French verb done -- Blotwell 08:22, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Proposed merge
I don't think that it should be merged - clearly different subjects. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.108.135.34 (talk • contribs).

Dont merge them
mergeing them would be ridiculas, they are completely differnet things!--WikiJake 04:20, 2 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. The different topics seem to take a different viewpoint, and the verb tables are extremely useful. A merged article would be very long. Lofty 10:08, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

(What was the ridiculous merge proposal referred to above? Those comments are totally mysterious to me.)

I would suggest splitting this article into two, because at the moment it goes well beyond "morphology" to discuss topics that should go in a differently-named article (e.g. "French verbal syntax"). And then much of the content of the existing French verbs article could be moved into these two specialized pages. CapnPrep 10:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)


 * (The proposal was to merge it with French conjugation.) I agree that this article is mis-titled, but I'm not sure I agree with your proposed solution to the problem. Ruakh 12:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

(In that case I don't see what was so "ridiculous" about the proposal, but never mind.)

OK, "French verbal syntax" is probably too technical. We could also merge the useful information from this article into French verbs and French conjugation as appropriate and then delete this one (I don't think any other language has a "verb morphology" page). This looks like what they have for Spanish. The conjugation article might include: The French verbs article would then cover:
 * the traditional conjugation classes and their evolution from Latin
 * stem alternations
 * tense auxiliary selection
 * paradigms of endings (tables)
 * how the conjugated forms are used to express tense, aspect, mood (uses of the subjonctif, uses of the conditionnel, etc.)
 * non-finite constructions
 * verby topics like sequence of tenses, inversion, past participle agreement

CapnPrep 15:19, 5 September 2006 (UTC)


 * (Thanks; I made that proposal, and was rather surprised that everyone seemed to disagree.) I think French verbs is pretty much fine as it is. The only things that annoy me about it are the prominence of its "Classification" section (since it's just about conjugation) and the lack of discussion of non-finite moods outside of the "Tenses and aspects in other verb forms". Ruakh 15:58, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Adding to the stem to preserve the pronunciation
This section of the article currently uses the wording:
 * The -c- in certain stems receives a cedilla before any ending which would otherwise change its pronunciation

and something similar for the soft -g-. More precisely, is it not the lack of a silent -e- at the beginning of the suffix that necessitates the addition to the stem? I'm not a proper linguist so I didn't want to assume... BigBlueFish 20:18, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Not at all. It's the lack of a suffix-initial -e- or -i-, silent or otherwise, with or without an accent mark, that necessitates the change. Put another way, it's the presence of a suffix-initial -a-, -â-, -o- that necessitates the change. Hence, we have commence, commencé, commencèrent, commencions, etc., but commençons, commença, commençât, etc.; and similarly with -g- vs. -ge-. —RuakhTALK 21:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Problem with this article
As a non-speaker of French and a non-grammarian, I see at least one frustrating problem with this article: For instance, what is the English translation of the "imperfect indicative" of the verb parler, that is, ils parlaient? --Robert.Allen (talk) 04:57, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
 * there are no English translations for the example verbs and their tenses
 * also there aren't any explanations (or links to explanations) of the tenses and how they affect meaning for an English speaker
 * The article assumes some knowledge of French by the reader, because it is talking about morphology and not about translation. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 10:10, 27 September 2019 (UTC)