Rule regarding infinitives?

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Permalink Reply by Frank on October 18, 2009 at 12:52pm

Hi Al,

This is a grammar rule and it always applies. The second verb has to immediately follow the first one, which is often "faire".

But you need to distinguish two actual verbs vs a single verb using an auxiliary.

Il l'a fait manger (two verbs here: faire and manger - he made him/her/it eat)
Il l'a mangé (a single verb here: manger, using the passé composé - he ate it)

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Permalink Reply by Al Graham on October 18, 2009 at 1:23pm

Thanks Frank,

So, if I've got this right:

Il chante pendant que il danse (He sings while he dances)

'danse' is separated by other words, so it wouldn't be an infinitive?

Il chante, danse et dit les plaisanteries (He sings, dances and tells jokes) am I correct in assuming the comma after the first verb means the second would not be an infinitive?

Also, would you please give a couple of other examples where the second verb is an infinitive?

Thanks for your help.

Al

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on October 19, 2009 at 6:19pm

You take "follows" too literally.

It's that there's a grammatical relationship: one verb "takes" another as its complement/object. They don't literally need to follow one another in terms of word order. For example, consider the sentences:

Je veux chanter
"I want to sing"
Je veux qu'il revienne
"I want him to come back"

if you turn these sentence round as follows[*], the complement of the verb (the infinitive chanter in one case and qu'il revienne in the other) remains:

Ce que je veux, c'est chanter.
"What I want to do is sing"
Ce que je veux, c'est qu'il revienne.
"What I want is for him to come back"

I wonder if the "rule that you heard" actually helps very much. It's not actually true and it seems that it's confusing you.

[*] I'm cheating slightly: there are cases where this "changing the sentence round" actually does change the complement (notice in English we had to introduce the word "for").

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on October 18, 2009 at 1:37pm

It depends a bit on what you mean by "follows", though.

One construction is that verbs following the main verb are infinitives. But it is possible for one verb to "take" another conjugated verb. For example:

Je veux venir.
I want to-come (infinitive)
Je veux qu' il vienne
I want that he comes = "I want him to come" (conjugated verb)

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Permalink Reply by Al Graham on October 19, 2009 at 6:10pm

Thanks, Frank and Neil.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the questions/sentences I constructed in my previous post?

Al

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