Talk:French conjugation

External Link Addition

I'd like to add a link to the verb conjugation trainer and quiz at Online French Help Does anyone see a problem with that?

Perhaps structure by tense, rather than verb type?

For the most part, most of the verb forms follow rather predictable patterns; for example, given the first-person plural of the present indicative, one can nearly always determine all forms of the imperfect indicative. (The only exceptions are être, -cer and -ger verbs, and verbs that lack one form or the other.) I think it might be helpful to explain these patterns when they exist, because otherwise we're essentially giving no information about irregular and stem-changing verbs. (I'd just like to hear another opinion before I go ahead and destroy all the tables that people worked to create.) - Ruakh 16:39, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

There's a fairly comprehensive article at Morphology of the French verb which was translated from the French Wikipedia one. How does that compare? —Blotwell 04:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Morphology of the French verb is very comprehensive, but it's rather poorly written. (Well, that's not quite accurate; I don't think anyone wrote it poorly. Rather, the French Wikipedia has a very different style from the English one, largely due to a difference between Francophone and Anglophone cultures, and this difference in style carries through in the translation.) It needs to be changed in a lot of ways to be consistent with the style of the English Wikipedia; also, it has some information that does constitute verb conjugation but does not actually constitute verb morphology (i.e., the information about auxiliary verbs). And then, some parts of it are simply inaccurate; for example, the vast majority of intransitive verbs use avoir, not être, as their auxiliaries.

Relatedly, I think French verb conjugation is a better name than Morphology of the French verb, simply because all the other articles about French-language topics have names starting with the word "French"; so if anything, I think the latter should be merged here. Ruakh 04:32, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

No one ever replied to this comment; if no one objects in the next few days, I'm going to make this change. Ruakh 16:40, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Could we rename this page "French conjugation tables"? Because normally I would expect "French conjugation" and "French verb morphology" to refer to the same article. As it happens, French verb morphology is currently also mis-named (see that article's talk page). CapnPrep 09:54, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

The thing is, this article shouldn't be just a bunch of French conjugation tables, as this is an encyclopedia, and a collection of French conjugation tables is not at all encyclopedic. Ruakh 12:18, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

The table approach makes sense for premier and deuxième groupe verbs, which are fully regular (in some sense) so I think this part of the page can be salvaged, with editing. Your "tense"-based organization will help to make sense of the subregularities in the troisième groupe and is certainly a better idea than just reproducing 70 tables or whatever it is. But even then, a small number of example tables wouldn't hurt, to illustrate the results. CapnPrep 16:17, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Congratulations! I'm French and everything is true! Thanks too! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.76.87.99 (talk • contribs) 11:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC).

summaries

I'm adding summaries of the different conjugations along with their pronunciations. I'm sure I've overlooked a few differences, for example in the -oir verbs, which I haven't added yet. I'll get to that in a day or so. kwami (talk) 23:44, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

It's looking good so far. Though I wonder, after seeing your recent edit to the être section if, for example, serai should be represented as /s^əʀe/ or as /s(ə)ʀe/. The former seems to imply that the schwa is extra short or epinthetic while the latter implies that the schwa is either optional, has variable presence depending on dialect, or is somehow eliminated in certain contexts. My crude understanding of French points towards the latter interpretations. I also highly doubt that French makes a phonemic contrast between an extra short and non-short schwa. Is there a justification for the superscript schwa? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:54, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

AFAIK it is influenced by dialect and register, but is also epenthetic. (Where the schwas are placed depends on dialect/register, but in some positions they are required by just about everyone.) It's also easier to read. I wouldn't care if someone changed it, though. kwami (talk) 09:37, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll go ahead and change it, then. My French-English dictionary represents such "deletable" schwas with a perenthesis so that petit is /p(ə)ti/ but peton is /pətɔ̃/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:21, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Rating

I just got my rating of this article as a Stub reversed, and I want do lay down my reasons for having rated it like that. As a linguist, my interest pertains to the language system. But the only information this article provides me with is about individual items that are neither related to the language system as a whole (by the text of the article) nor explained with regard to their coming into being. Neither are irregularities related to frequency of occurence. So there is virtually no relevant information at all, nothing that would provide a reader with general information about the properties of the French conjugation. She can get every detail she wants, granted, but such details must either be interpreted in the context of typological knowledge that only a linguist has, or it remains mere unconnected, worthless data. I can't see any way in which this article fulfills Start Class criteria. G Purevdorj (talk) 12:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I understand the problems you have with the article but none of that makes it a stub. Per WP:STUB:

A stub is an article containing only a few sentences of text which is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject...Sizable articles are usually not considered stubs, even if they lack wikification or copy editing. With these articles, a cleanup template is usually added instead of a stub template

I'm not proficient in the qualifications for an article's class or rating, so I can't help you with what the class should be, but I'm sure that it isn't a stub. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:48, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

There is a second definition of Stub as contained in the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment#Quality_scale

"The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to become a meaningful article. It is usually very short, but can be of any length if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible."

According to this definition, this article would qualify as a stub. And as this is the definition that pertains to rating, I would understand that it is more applicable than the definition you cited which pertains to the creation of (ideally useful) stubs. I don't mind leaving this one article unrated, there are 1500 unrated articles left that are covered by the language project (and there are 650 articles I've already rated, yeah). If you don't agree that the definition I just cited should be applied here, I simply won't rate it. G Purevdorj (talk) 00:03, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Go ahead and give it whatever rating is most likely to attract people to come work on the article; I'm not sure there's much at stake here. It would be more helpful, instead of broadly complaining that the current article is "worthless" and contains "virtually no relevant information at all" (I do see your point as a linguist, but what a way to alienate the editors that have already contributed to this article), to list some specific questions that you would like to see addressed and point to similar articles that you think would be good models for the development of this one. CapnPrep (talk) 00:33, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I see I was misguided in my understanding of what a stub class means. Because "stub" is also used for a category of articles, I was under the impression that marking an article stub class was the same as tagging the article with a stub template. While there's a bit of overlap, I can see that this could very well be the case of a longish stub-class article. I could make a case for this being start class but that would probably be rooted in stubbornness more than honest assessment and I like CapnPrep's proposed criterion here. Let's get some editors to fix this b*tch up by marking it as stub. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:30, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep, some suggestions for improvement may be due. One article that does it better is Latin conjugation. It addresses some synchronic regularities and, moreover, meaning. It’s lacking diachronic explanations, however. I’ve rated it C-Class. The article on French conjugation looks more like the article on Ancient Greek grammar (tables) which is a List class article only used as a supplement to Ancient Greek grammar. Ancient Greek grammar as a whole lacks a lot of content, but the part on Ancient_Greek_grammar#Verbs#Aorist_tense contains a useful diachronic explanation. If French conjugation had such information in addition to what Latin conjugation has, it would qualify for Good Article. G Purevdorj (talk) 09:22, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Structure and Content problems

This article needs some serious editing, and not wanting to criticize without offering any suggestions, here's my two cents:

Structure

• In French, verbs are not described based on their endings (it's rather a sub-description), but they are divided into groups and sections, as follows:
  • 1st group (verbs ending in -er)
  • 2nd group (verbs ending in -ir / gerund ending in -issant)
  • 3rd group
    • 1st section (verbs ending in -ir / gerund ending in -ant)
    • 2nd section (verbs ending in -oir)
    • 3rd section (verbs ending in -re)

• To give more information about the frequency of occurrence of each group (question asked in a previous paragraph), here are a few notes:
  • The first two groups are considered 'regular', meaning the verb morphology changes, for each group, in one predictable manner.
  • The third group is considered 'irregular', as it contains the largest number of exceptions and irregularities.
  • The third group, with its 350 or so verbs, is considered a 'dead' conjugation form, meaning:
  • Most new verbs introduced to French are of the first group, ex: téléviser, atomiser, radiographier,...
  • The third group also includes the verb aller (to go), the only verb ending in -er belonging to the third group.

• In its current form, the article sandwiches the verb être (to be) between some other two verbs, and that is completely misleading, and here's why:

The verbs être (to be) and avoir (to have) are the only verbs considered auxiliary, and they're used to form the compound tenses. So, They need to have a heading of their own, under which we should add to their conjugation the reasons why are verbs conjugated with either être or avoir for the compound tenses. But if we do include that section, we would have to link to or include the definiton of transitive, intrasitive, and pronominal verbs, concepts that are necessary for such information.

Content

• The verbs included as examples of conjugation shouldn't be so arbitrary (especially the few last ones.) Instead, we would choose one example each for the first two groups, and one for each section of the third group. Additionally, we would add the 2 auxiliaries and the verb aller as it's a notable exception.

• The conjugation tables in here are restricted to the simple forms, and I don't see any logical reason behind this. As this article is about French conjugation, we should include all conjugated forms available. Since this is an encyclopedic entry, why give partial information for one subject? To make myself more clear, I'll list how the tables are formed in the "Bescherelle" book, the quintessential conjugation book that French-language students are taught with. (I'm including an example with this too.)

• • Indicative (indicatif)
    • Present (Présent) je vais
    • Present Perfect (Passé composé) je suis allé
    • Imperfect (Imparfait) j'allais
    • Past Imperfect (Plus-que-parfait) j'étais allé
    • Simple Past (Passé simple) j'allai
    • Past Perfect (Passé antérieur) je fus allé
    • Simple Future (futur simple) j'irai
    • Future Perfect (futur antérieur) je serai allé

• • Subjonctive (Subjonctif)
    • Present (Présent) que j'aille
    • Past (Passé) que je sois allé
    • Imperfect (Imparfait) que j'allasse
    • Past Imperfect (Plus-que-parfait) que je fusse allé

• • Imperative (Impératif)
    • Present (Présent) va
    • Past (Passé) sois allé

• • Conditional (Conditionnel)
    • Present (Présent) j'irais
    • Past (form I) (Passé 1ere forme) je serais allé
    • Past (form II) (Passé 2eme forme) je fusse allé

• • Infinitive (Infinitif)
    • Present (Présent) aller
    • Past (Passé) être allé

• • Participle (Participe)
    • Present (Présent) allant
    • Past (Passé) allé / étant allé

I'm hoping someone will add comments, critiques, or suggestions to this entry, because seriously, this article needs work. 76.126.255.209 (talk) 17:46, 25 January 2009 (UTC)