Grammar - Pluperfect
French: AQA A Level, topic 8.3.6
Pluperfect
What is it ?
- It’s a tense used to say what had happened.
- It is formed with the auxiliary verb (être or avoir) in the imperfect tense and the past participle.
- When you use être as the auxiliary, it means that the past participle must agree in gender and number with the subject.
- That means adding an extra E for the feminine, S for the plural and ES for the feminine plural.
Examples
- J’avais déjà vu ce film
- 🡪 I had already seen that/this film
- Nous étions allés le voir au cinéma du quartier
- 🡪 we had been to see it at our local/neighbourhood cinema/at the cinema of the area
- Il ne l’avait pas aimé
- 🡪 he hadn’t liked it
- Il avait dit qu’il était vieux-jeu
- 🡪 he said it was out of date/out-dated/old-fashioned
- Elles étaient sorties à 19 heures
- 🡪 they had gone out at 7pm