Non-agreement of past participle

[Curt Jugg]

In a French grammar I have come across the following example sentence:

"Nous nous sommes tous les deux cassés le bras."

Now I understood that where the reflexive pronoun is an indirect object, as the second nous is here, the past participle does not vary for gender and number. So I am wondering why it hasn't been spelled cassé in this case. Has it got something to do with tous les deux or is it likely to be a misprint. Or is there another explanation I haven't thought of?

Grateful for any help.

[Neil Coffey]

Hi Curt -- It's probably just a misprint. As you say, the usual norm is to not add the "-s" in this case.

You may be aware that a spelling reform was introduced in 1990, and there has been some recent effort (though not resoundingly successful so far...) to revive it. Part of the ethos of that reform was to simplify a few cases where the traditional past participle rules are pointlessly overcomplicated. However, as far as I recall, this specific case hasn't changed.

[Neil Coffey]

Hi Deborah,

It's not quite true-- at least in the traditional rules-- that the past participle always agrees with être. It usually does, but this case is an exception.

The rule with "reflexive" verbs is basically that the past participle agrees with the direct object if it comes before the past participle, else with nothing. (If you think about it, this is actually basically the same rule as with avoir.)

So, when you follow it through, this gives you these cases:

Elle s'est lavée.

She had a wash.

Direct object is "se", actually the same as "elle", feminine plural. In other words, the "normal" case that most people probably learn at school as being "the" rule for past participle agreement with être and reflexive verbs.

Elle s'est lavé les mains.

She washed her hands.

The direct object is "les mains", but it doesn't come before the past participle, so no agreement.

Les mêmes mains qu'il/elle s'est lavées ce matin.

The same hands that he/she washed this morning.

Direct object is "les mains" and it comes before the verb, so that is what the past participle agrees with, whatever the subject.

The rule you mention with the past participle and infinitive is, traditionally, indeed the rule that is followed. So for example:

(a) Les chanteurs que j'ai entendus chanter. (Object "chanteurs" before the past participle, which carries out the action of "chanter".)

(b) Les chansons que j'ai entendu chanter. (No agreement: object of the verb, "chansons", precedes the verb but does NOT carry out the action of "chanter".)

However:

• it's questionable just how common, or for how many speakers, you can realistically get the passive interpretation of the infinitive-- in other words, for many speakers, they simply wouldn't use sentence (b) in the first place, so arguing about past participle agreement on an ungrammatical sentence is a bit pointless.
• in the reformed spelling of 1990, for what it's worth, this rule has been relaxed and the past participle is always invariable when followed by an infinitive.

As you can see, it's pointlessly complicated. I seriously doubt that in practice most speakers actually follow these rules to the letter (though we are also talking about corner cases that don't arise very often).

Note that in spontaneous speech, in the rare cases where it would make a pronunciation difference, these agreements are practically never made anyway.

[Curt Jugg]

Thanks for these replies, Neil and Deborah. Very complicated indeed, but also very interesting.

[KB Norton]

Our teacher at school (in 1970's!) taught us am extremely simple rule for this:
'The past participle agrees with a preceding direct object' - end of story!
Nothing to do with avoir or etre as Deb is saying, nor withreflexive verbs, nor infinitives etc. I have never yet foundn an exception to this simple rule (thoexive pronoun, se etc, is always a preceding, but not always direct, object. Therefore the original sentence is clearly wrong - there is no preceding direct object of the verb 'casser'. No?

[Neil Coffey]

The rule your teacher mentioned (and indeed which I mentioned in my post) is mostly true.

However, there are exceptions where the participle arbitrarily agrees with the subject:

- être verbs, where there is no object at all (je suis venue);

- some "reflexive" verbs where there's little sense in saying that there is a direct object. For example in Elle s'est attendue à... ("She expected....") there's little sense in saying that se is a direct object. But nonetheless, the tradition is to add the agreement. Similarly with se taire (e.g. Elle s'est tue): although on the surface to an English speaker, this looks like you're saying "She shut herself up", the problem is that as a transitive verb, taire doesn't have this meaning (rather it is used to mean "shut up" as in "quell, dispel" as in a rumour, not as in to "shut up" a person). So to a French speaker, when you say Elle s'est tue, you're not actually saying ??C'est elle-même qu'elle a tue (whereas with Elle s'est lavée, this does equate to C'est elle-même qu'elle a lavée).

To put it another way, in many cases where a verb is arbitrarily "reflexive" (French grammarians would really call these verbs pronominaux, not réflêchis) in a way that doesn't really make sense when you break it down, the tradition is to arbitrarily add the agreement anyway.

The rule is also fine with past participles followed by infinitives if you firstly take the stance that e.g. in entendre chanter any object has to be assigned to the whole compound expression, not just to either entendre or chanter. But otherwise, Les chansons que j'ai entendu chanter would also be an exception.