8.4 Infinitive & Participial Constructions, the Gérondif & Reported Speech

8.4 Infinitive & Participial Constructions, the Gérondif & Reported Speech

Chapters 5 through 8 covered the finite verb — forms that carry a person and a tense. This section covers what French does when it deliberately avoids a finite verb. Where English happily strings full clauses together ("while he was eating breakfast, he was finishing his homework"), French compresses the subordinate action into a participle or an infinitive. That compression is not a stylistic flourish; it is the default, and it means CLEP candidates meet non-finite forms in nearly every reading passage.

The exam tests this directly. The College Board's published sample item for Part A reads:

Paul finissait ses devoirs tout _______ prenant son petit déjeuner. (A) avoir (B) ayant (C) en (D) pour

The key is en — the marker of the gérondif. A candidate who has drilled the subjunctive for weeks but never studied en + -ant will simply not recognise the frame.

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1. The Present Participle (le participe présent)

Formation

Take the nous form of the present indicative, strip -ons, add -ant:

There are exactly three irregular present participles, and they are worth memorising because they are also the three highest-frequency verbs in the language:

• être → étant
• avoir → ayant
• savoir → sachant

The Agreement Rule That Decides Part A Items

A form in -ant can be either a true adjective or a verbal participle, and only one of them agrees.

• Ce sont des couleurs éclatantes. (quality → adjective → agrees)
• J'ai vu des couleurs éclatant au soleil. (governs au soleil → verbal → invariable)

A handful of pairs even differ in spelling between the two functions — fatigant (adjective) versus fatiguant (participle), provocant versus provoquant, différent versus différant. Reading comprehension items rarely hinge on the spelling, but Part A items do hinge on the -e/-s agreement.

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2. The Gérondif: en + Present Participle

Adding en in front of the present participle produces the gérondif, the workhorse structure of connected French prose. It carries three distinct values, and the exam expects you to read the right one from context:

The Same-Subject Constraint

The gérondif's implied subject must be the subject of the main verb. This single rule generates a large family of distractors.

• Correct: J'ai rencontré Marc en sortant du cinéma. (I was the one leaving)
• If the two subjects differ, French must use a full clause: Je l'ai rencontré pendant qu'il sortait du cinéma.

Compare the difference in meaning, which Part C questions test as an inference point:

• J'ai vu Paul courant dans la rue. — a present participle modifying Paul; Paul is running.
• J'ai vu Paul en courant dans la rue. — a gérondif tied to the main subject; I am running.

tout en + Participle

Prefixing tout intensifies the simultaneity or adds a note of concession — doing one thing while nevertheless doing another:

• Paul finissait ses devoirs tout en prenant son petit déjeuner. (simultaneity, emphasised)
• Elle a accepté le poste tout en sachant que le salaire était modeste. (concession: even though she knew)

[!IMPORTANT] Only en combines with the participle this way. Avoir, ayant, and pour — the three distractors in the official sample item — are all structurally impossible before prenant. After tout, the only grammatical continuation is en + participle.

English -ing Is Not French -ant

The commonest interference error on this exam is translating an English gerund with -ant. In each of these frames French requires an infinitive:

To insist on an action in progress, French uses the periphrasis être en train de + infinitive: Il est en train de travailler.

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3. Infinitive Constructions After Prepositions

With one exception, every French preposition governs the infinitive, never a participle.

Anteriority: après avoir / après être + Past Participle

après is the outlier among prepositions of time: it cannot take a simple infinitive. It requires the past infinitive — avoir or être in the infinitive plus the past participle:

• Après avoir terminé ses études, elle est partie au Sénégal.
• Après être arrivés à l'hôtel, ils ont défait leurs valises. (agreement with être, exactly as in the passé composé)
• Après s'être reposée, elle a repris la route. (pronominal verb; participle agrees with the preceding direct object)

Set this against avant de + simple infinitive, and the contrast becomes a clean Part A binary:

avant de + infinitif présent   →  action not yet done   (avant de partir)
après    + infinitif passé     →  action already done   (après être parti)

[!WARNING] Après partir and après avoir parti are both ungrammatical. The first omits the required auxiliary; the second gives partir the wrong auxiliary — it is an être verb, so the form is après être parti.

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4. Reported Speech (le discours indirect)

When a statement is embedded under a verb of saying, asking, or thinking, French adjusts the introducer and, if that verb is in a past tense, the tense of the reported verb itself.

Choosing the Introducer

Note that indirect questions lose their inversion and their est-ce que: Il demande où j'habite, never où est-ce que j'habite or où habite-je.

The Tense Shift (la concordance des temps)

If the introducing verb is in the present, nothing moves. If it is in a past tense, the reported verb shifts back one step:

• « Je pars demain. » → Elle a dit qu'elle partait le lendemain.
• « J'ai fini le rapport. » → Il a annoncé qu'il avait fini le rapport.
• « Nous viendrons vous chercher. » → Ils ont promis qu'ils viendraient nous chercher.

Time and place markers move with the tense: demain → le lendemain, hier → la veille, aujourd'hui → ce jour-là, ici → là.

This is where indirect discourse meets section 7.3. A conditionnel présent inside a que clause after a past verb of speech is not hypothetical at all — it is a reported future. Elle a dit qu'elle viendrait means "she said she would come," a statement of intention, not "she would come if …". Part C inference questions build wrong answers on exactly that misreading.