From the life of Vernon Sullivan

[yevgeny]

Hi! There's a fragment from the life of the famous French writer Vernon Sullivan (Boris Vian),which has confused me : "Apres le scandale de "J'irai cracher sur vos tombes", le public ne prend plus Boris Vian au serieux comme ecrivain.Et puis,les critiques voient en lui seulement Vernon Sullivan: ils ne le regardent ecrire et ne l'ecoutent chanter que pour mieux l'attaquer". I can't understand the last sentence,namely the verbs combinations "le regardent ecrire" and "l'ecoutent chanter".Is it a regular or special order of verbs in French grammar?Please,translate the last sentence for me. I would appreciate your help.

[Neil Coffey]

This is the construction that you use in French where in English you'd have a construction such as "saw him dancing", "heard them singing" etc-- i.e. where you have a verb of "perception" following by an object followed by a verb in -ing.

In French, you use the infinitive for the second verb (the equivalent of the one with -ing in English).

So for example, to say "I saw him laugh", you could say Je l'ai vu rire (literally "I saw him to laugh").

Note how in English, you could use the infinitive if the first verb is passive (so both "He was heard laughing" or "He was heard to laugh" are grammatical). It just happens that French allows the infinitive in the active case as well.