The Past Anterior in French
The passé antérieur(past anterior) is a French literary tense typically found in novels and classical or historical written texts. It's used to talk about a past action completed before another past action. The passé antérieur is formed with an auxiliaire(auxiliary) conjugated in the passé simple(past historic), followed by a participe passé(past participle).
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In this article, you’ll find out how to form the passé antérieur, when it's used, and how it compares to other past tenses. C’est parti !(Let’s get started!)
Questions This Article Answers
What is the passé antérieur?
When is the passé antérieur used in French?
What is a literary tense in French?
What everyday French tense does the passé antérieur correspond to?
How do you recognize verbs in the passé antérieur in French?
The Passé Antérieur in French
The passé antérieur(past anterior) is often called a literary tense because it's reserved for written French. It has largely fallen out of use in contemporary French literature, but you'll inevitably encounter it if you read nineteenth-century authors such as Honoré de Balzac and Émile Zola, or twentieth-century authors like Marcel Proust and Simone de Beauvoir. You may also find it in historical documents. Because the passé antérieur is an old-fashioned literary tense, it's a bit unlikely that you'll need to produce it yourself, but you should be able to recognize it and understand its uses, as you're sure to come across it in literature.
The Passé Antérieur Expresses Anteriority
The passé antérieur is a past tense used to express anteriority. In grammar, this means that it refers to a past action that happened before another past action. The passé antérieur is almost always paired with another past tense called the passé simple(past historic), which is also a literary tense reserved for classical, written French.
The English equivalent of the passé antérieur is the past perfect, as shown in the examples below. In each example, observe how the passé antérieur refers to a completed action that takes place before the event described in the main clause with the passé simple.
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Need a little refresher on the passé simple (past historic)? Check it out in the following article!
As you may have noticed in all the example sentences above, the passé antérieur is primarily introduced by conjunctions that highlight the chronology of events. The table below shows the most common ones.
Conjunctions Commonly Used with the Passé Antérieur
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What about the Plus-Que-Parfait?
Both the passé antérieur and the plus-que-parfait(pluperfect) are translated into English using the past perfect. Yes, that can be a bit confusing! Both tenses express anteriority in the past; however, it's important to note that they're usually not interchangeable in French!
For one thing, whereas you'll hear the plus-que-parfait in everyday French, this isn't the case with the passé antérieur, which belongs to classical and historical literature.
In addition, the passé antérieur has a much more limited use than the plus-que-parfait. As mentioned earlier, the passé antérieur is almost exclusively used in temporal subordinate clauses connected to a main clause in the passé simple.
Here are some examples with the plus-que-parfait that mirror the examples given just above with the passé antérieur. Observe how these clauses can function independently of any other time reference!
Do you want to know more about the plus-que-parfait? Check it out in the following article!
Recognizing Verbs in the Passé Antérieur in French
As a temps composé(compound tense), the passé antérieur is composed of two parts:
- an auxiliary, either être(to be) or avoir(to have), conjugated in the passé simple,
- the past participle of the main verb.
1. The Auxiliary
For the auxiliary, either the verb être or avoir is used in the passé simple. These verbs have the following irregular conjugations:
Auxiliaries Être and Avoir in the Passé Simple in French
| Subject | être | avoir |
|---|---|---|
| je | fus | eus |
| tu | fus | eus |
| il, elle, on | fut | eut |
| nous | fûmes | eûmes |
| vous | fûtes | eûtes |
| ils, elles | furent | eurent |
Auxiliary Selection
As with any compound tense, whether être or avoir is used depends on the main verb! Here are some general guidelines:
- All pronominal verbs take être. Pronominal verbs include verbs like se lever(to get up), se préparer(to get ready), and se soucier(to worry).
- A small set of 17 intransitive verbs, which are sometimes called "movement verbs," take être. This set includes commonly used verbs such as aller(to go), venir(to come), and partir(to leave).
- All other verbs take avoir.
Learn more about the auxiliaries être and avoir in these articles:
2. The Past Participle of the Main Verb
The main verb appears in its past participle form, which is placed after the auxiliary, e.g., nous eûmes gagné(we had won). Fortunately, there is a pattern for transforming infinitives into past participles in French! For regular verbs, the infinitive endings correspond to the following past participle endings:
Regular Past Participle Endings in French
| Infinitive Ending | Past Participle Ending |
|---|---|
| -er | -é |
| -ir | -i |
| -re | -u |
Here's how the pattern works:
- An -er verb like gagner(to win) becomes gagné(won).
- An -ir verb like définir(to define) becomes défini(defined).
- An -re verb like entendre(to hear) becomes entendu(heard).
There are of course exceptions to this pattern! For example, the past participle of faire(to do, to make) is fait(done, made) and the past participle of prendre(to take) is pris(taken).
Do you want to know more about past participles in French? Check out the following article!
Combining the Auxiliary and the Past Participle
We're now ready to see what the passé antérieur looks like when the auxiliary and past participle are combined! Let's first look at a verb like parler(to speak), which takes avoir as an auxiliary. As a regular verb, the past participle of parler is parlé(spoken). This gives us the following conjugations for parler in the passé antérieur:
Parler in the Passé Antérieur in French
Now let's take a look at an example with a verb that requires the auxiliary être, such as aller(to go).
Aller in the Passé Antérieur in French
Past Participle Agreement
You may have noticed that the past participles in the table above have parentheses at the end of their forms. These represent gender and number agreement! This is known as l'accord du participe passé(past participle agreement). The rules for past participle agreement differ depending on whether the auxiliary être is used with a non-pronominal verb (like we just saw above) or a pronominal verb (as we'll see next), but agreement can even occur with the auxiliary avoir!
Do you want to know more about the interesting yet tricky rule of past participle agreement in French? There's a section dedicated to it in the following article!
Finally, let's take a look at a pronominal verb like se coucher (to go to bed). Remember that all pronominal verbs take the auxiliary être!
Se Coucher in the Passé Antérieur in French
Do you need to brush up on pronominal verbs? Check out the following article:
Although you won't have to produce the passé antérieur, you'll be proud of yourself when you can recognize its forms and use in French literature!
Need Some Practice?
Try conjugating verbs in the passé antérieur with our Conjugation Drill!
Explore more literary tenses in French!
