sont soupçonnées

[Pete Laubscher]

In Le Figaro today (101810) this appeared: "Les compagnies pétrolières sont soupçonnées de profiter de la crise actuelle autour de la pénurie d'essence pour relever leurs prix de vente du carburant." The past participle is 'soupçonné'. The extract is not using a pp, but why does the pp not indicate a plural 'soupçonnées', while this tense (what is it by the way?) does? How is it translated?

Thnks.

[stu harris]

I can't answer your technical question, but I can easily translate:

The oil companies are suspected of taking advantage of the current petrol shortage crisis by raising their selling prices.

[Pete Laubscher]

Much obliged. Thnks stu!

[Neil Coffey]

Actually, you could argue that soupçonnées is a past participle here, and that sont soupçonnées is a passive.

However, it doesn't really matter either way: past participles are essentially adjectives, and in the sequence être + adjective, the adjective will always agree with the subject.

[Pete Laubscher]

Thnks Neil.

Could you explain why we have "ils/elles ont soupçonné" ?

Thnks

[Pete Laubscher]

That [ils/elles ont soupçonné] comes from the online French Dictionary at 'soupçonner' http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/dictionary/

Why is 'soupçonné', combined with 'ont' not 'soupçonnées', since it too appears to be used adjectivally?

I'd appreciate you putting me out of my misery Neil.

Thnks.

[Pete Laubscher]

Thnks Megumi.

I'm afraid I am still confused.

Is 'Elles ont soupçonné....' = 'They have suspected....' ?

If so, I still can't understand why, in this subclause the verb, even a pp, does not agree with the subject in number.

[Neil Coffey]

Because with avoir (the form ont here), i.e. with the majority of verbs when using the past participle "normally" to form a past tense, it doesn't generally agree with the subject.

But with être, it generally does.

[Neil Coffey]

N.B. These cases aren't mutually exclusive, though! For example in:

Les documents qu'elles se sont envoyés

You have être used AND a preceeding direct object :-)

It's worth noting, however, that some of these "rules" (of which there are actually further complications) are largely arbitrary and don't always describe how French is actually spoken in many cases. Or in other words: there's no need to panic about them too much!

[Neil Coffey]

As Megumi has mentioned, typically, the past participle agrees with the subject when être is used, but not when avoir is used.

The être case covers various types of use:
- certain common verbs marking change of location/state, such as arriver, mourir, plus "reflexive" verbs which always take être
- the passive (which is the case you have from your newspaper)
- other cases where you could argue that the past participle is being used as a "normal" adjective

With both avoir and être there are a few complications which have been mentioned here on the forum, especially in relation to the written language.

[Pete Laubscher]

Sigh!!!!!!!!!

Thnks to you both.

[Neil Coffey]

I just wanted to mention something else: some of the rules arguably don't come with practice, because they so rarely come into play that if you waited to practice them, you'd probably never learn them... :-)

(Needless to say, these are the rules that are essentially inventions and don't tend to reflect actual speech.)

[Pete Laubscher]

So can I take it that 'être' is most commonly used in the passive, and I can safely have the subject and pp agree?