Basic Grammar Washington DC

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Identifying the Parts of Speech
You’re probably already familiar with at least some of the parts of speech, like nouns and verbs, even though you don’t necessarily think about them when speaking your native language. Because I use these terms throughout the article, I want to give you an overview of the parts of speech. To help illustrate the differences between parts of speech, I talk about a sentence that has all eight essential parts of speech in both languages: Je veux vraiment aller en France et visiter les musées célèbres. (I really want to go to France and visit the famous museums.) In the following sections, I bold the part of speech under consideration in my French sentence and English translation.

Nouns
Nouns are people, places, things, and ideas. They’re the concrete and abstract things in your sentences, the who and the what that are doing something or having something done to them. Take a look at the example: Je veux vraiment aller en France et visiter les musées célèbres. (I really want to go to France and visit the famous museums.) France is a proper noun — a noun that refers to a specific person, place, or thing and that’s always capitalized. Other proper nouns are Laura (that’s me!) and the Louvre. Museums is a plural noun, which means it’s also a countable noun because it can be counted: one museum, two museums, three museums, and so on. Collective nouns, like group and bunch, refer to a group of nouns considered a single unit. Uncountable nouns, like beauty and fear, are things that can’t be counted. In French, nouns are also masculine or feminine.Nouns need verbs to tell them what they’re doing, and verbs need nouns to explain who or what is acting or being acted upon. You can often replace nouns with pronouns — see “Using Pronouns” later in this chapter. Underline all the nouns in this section.

Q. Nouns are people, places, things, and ideas.
A. Nouns are people, places, things, and ideas.

Articles
An article is a very particular part of speech. You can use it only with a noun. French has three kinds of articles:

Definite articles: le, la, les (the)

Indefinite articles: un, une (a/an), des (some)

_ Partitive articles: du, de la, des (some). The definite article refers to something specific: le livre (the book), les idées (the ideas). An indefinite article is unspecific: un homme (a man), une chaise (a chair), des idées (some ideas). Partitive articles refer to a part of something: du pain (some bread), de la bière (some beer). (Note: In English, some is technically considered an adjective, not an article.) Je veux vraiment aller en France et visiter les musées célèbres. (I really want to go to France and visit the famous museums.)

Underline the articles in this section.
Q. An article is a very particular part of speech.
A. An article is a very particular part of speech.

Verbs
Verbs express actions and describe states of being. They tell you what’s happening, what the situation is like, and whether any music is pounding in the background during it all. Je veux vraiment aller en France et visiter les musées célèbres. (I really want to go to France and visit the famous museums.) Verbs are the most variable part of speech because they have all kinds of different forms, called conjugations, which help tell you who or what is doing something, when they’re doing it, and how they feel about it. French verbs are classified by how they’re conjugated:

Regular verbs
• -er verbs
• -ir verbs
• -re verbs

Stem-changing verbs

Spelling-change verbs

Irregular verbs

In addition, verbs have many different forms that give you all kinds of information about their actions:

Tense: Tense tells you when the verb action takes place — in the present, past, or future — and whether it was completed (perfect) or incomplete (imperfect).

Mood: Mood shows how the speaker feels about the verb action — whether it’s indicative, imperative, conditional, or subjunctive.

Voice: Voice indicates the relationship between the subject and the verb — whether it’s active, passive, or reflexive.

Q. Verbs express actions and describe states of being.
A. Verbs express actions and describe states of being.

Adjectives
Adjectives are flowery, helpful, and exciting words that describe nouns. Adjectives may tell you what color something is, whether it’s new or old, or its shape, size, or provenance. Je veux vraiment aller en France et visiter les musées célèbres. (I really want to go to France and visit the famous museums.) Adjectives usually aren’t essential, the way nouns and verbs are, because they just add some extra information to the basic facts. Compare My brother has a car to My older brother has a red car — the important information is that your brother has a car; the fact that he’s older than you and that the car is red is just window dressing. Adjectives like these are called descriptive adjectives, but adjectives come in many other useful varieties:

Demonstrative adjectives: ce, cette (this, that), ces (these, those)

Indefinite adjectives: quelques (some), certain (certain), plusieurs (several)

Interrogative adjectives: quel (which)

Negative adjectives: ne . . . aucun, ne . . . nul (no, not any)

Possessive adjectives: mon (my), ton (your), son (his/her)

Unlike boring old English adjectives, French adjectives have masculine, feminine, singular, and plural forms so that they can agree with nouns. Underline the adjectives in this section.

Q. Adjectives are flowery, helpful, and exciting words that describe nouns.
A. Adjectives are flowery, helpful, and exciting words that describe nouns.

Adverbs
Adverbs easily modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Like adjectives, adverbs aren’t always essential, but rather, they add some extra information to the words they’re helpfully modifying. In the example sentence, really modifies the verb want. Je veux vraiment aller en France et visiter les musées célèbres. (I really want to go to France and visit the famous museums.) English adverbs often end in -ly and indicate how the action of a verb is occurring: happily, quickly, rudely. Most of these words are adverbs of manner. The other kinds of adverbs are

Adverbs of frequency: jamais (never), souvent (often)

Adverbs of place: ici (here), partout (everywhere)

Adverbs of quantity: très (very), beaucoup (a lot)

Adverbs of time: avant (before), demain (tomorrow)

Interrogative adverbs: quand (when), où (where)

Negative adverbs: ne . . . pas (not), ne . . . jamais (never)

Q. Adverbs easily modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.
A. Adverbs easily modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.

Pronouns
Pronouns are easy to understand; they replace nouns. That is, pronouns also refer to people, places, things, and ideas, but they let you avoid repeating the same words over and over. For example, you could say, “I have a sister. My sister has a cat. The cat has fleas, and the fleas make the cat itch.” But hearing those nouns repeated each time gets a little old. A much nicer way to say that would be, “I have a sister. She has a cat. It has fleas, and they make it itch.” I, she, it, and they are personal pronouns because they have different forms for each grammatical person. Je veux vraiment aller en France et visiter les musées célèbres. (I really want to go to France and visit the famous museums.) French has five types of personal pronouns. The following are all equivalent to I/me, you, or he/him/it:

Subject pronouns: je, tu, il

Direct object pronouns: me, te, le

Indirect object pronouns: me, te, lui

Reflexive pronouns: me, te, se

Stressed pronouns: moi, toi, lui

French also has several kinds of impersonal pronouns, which doesn’t mean they’re unkind, just that they don’t have different forms for each grammatical person. However, many of them do have different forms for masculine, feminine, singular, and plural. Take a look (Note: I hold off on the definitions for now):

Adverbial pronouns: y, en

Demonstrative pronouns: celui, celle

Indefinite pronouns: autre, certain

Interrogative pronouns: quel, quelle

Negative pronouns: aucun, personne

Possessive pronouns: le mien, le tien

Relative pronouns: qui, que, dont

Q. Pronouns are easy to understand; they replace nouns.
A. Pronouns are easy to understand; they replace nouns.

Prepositions
A preposition is the part of speech you put in front of a noun or pronoun to show the relationship between that word and another word or phrase. When you go to the store, return from vacation, or trip over the shoes you left sitting under a towel lying on the floor, the prepositions tell you how those verbs and nouns fit together. The shoes are under the towel, not on, next to, or wrapped in it. Prepositions may be one word (to, at, about) or part of a group of words (next to, in front of, on top of). Je veux vraiment aller en France et visiter les musées célèbres. (I really want to go to France and visit the famous museums.) Prepositions are difficult to translate, perhaps more so than any other part of speech. The French preposition à, for example, usually means to, at, or in, but also has other meanings in certain expressions: _ Destination: Je vais à Paris. (I’m going to Paris.)

Current location: Je suis à la banque/à Londres. (I’m at the bank/in London.)

Function: un verre à vin (a wine glass, a glass for wine)

Owner: C’est à moi. (It’s mine, It belongs to me.)

Prepositions are therefore not like a list of vocabulary that you can just memorize, but rather, they’re grammatical terms with various functions that you have to study and practice.

Q. A preposition is the part of speech you put in front of a noun or pronoun to show the relationship between that word and another word or phrase.
A. A preposition is the part of speech you put in front of a noun or pronoun to show the relationship between that word and another word or phrase.

Conjunctions
Conjunctions join two or more words or phrases that are either equal or unequal. Je veux vraiment aller en France et visiter les musées célèbres. (I really want to go to France and visit the famous museums.) They come in a couple of varieties:

Coordinating conjunctions: These words — such as and, or, and but — bring together equals, as in I like coffee and tea. Other examples include He can’t read or write and We want to go, but we don’t have time. You can tell that a conjunction is coordinating when you can reverse the joined items with little or no difference in meaning. There’s no difference between I like coffee and tea and I like tea and coffee. Likewise, We want to go, but we don’t have time means pretty much the same thing as We don’t have time, but we want to go.

Subordinating conjuctions: Subordinating conjunctions — such as that, when, and as soon as — combine two clauses, or groups of words with a subject and verb. The conjunction tells you that the clause after it is subordinate, meaning that clause is dependent on the main clause, as in He thinks that I’m smart (I may or may not be smart, but he thinks I am), I don’t know when they’ll arrive (They’re supposed to arrive, but I don’t know when), and She left as soon as the phone rang (The phone rang, and then she left). If you reverse the clauses in my examples, you end up with either nonsense or a different meaning. I am smart that he thinks doesn’t make any sense, and The phone rang as soon as she left isn’t the same thing as She left as soon as the phone rang — in fact, it’s just the opposite. This test lets you know that these conjunctions are subordinating rather than coordinating. Underline the conjunctions in this section.

Q. Conjunctions join two or more words or phrases that are either equal or unequal.
A. Conjunctions join two or more words or phrases that are either equal or unequal.

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