French 15: Reflexive Verbs, Passive Voice and Pluperfect

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A pronominal verb is always paired with a reflexive pronoun that agrees with the subject and (almost) always precedes its verb. Reflexive verbs describe actions being done by the subject to the subject.

Pronominal verbs always take être as an auxiliary in compound tenses like the passé composé.

When a pronominal verb is inverted in a formal question, its reflexive pronoun stays before the verb.

Another type of pronominal verb, the reciprocal verb, is used with plural subject pronouns and describes when multiple people act upon each other.

You can distinguish between reflexive and reciprocal meanings by appending certain pronouns.

Ils s'aiment eux-mêmes. — They love themselves.
Elles s'aiment les unes les autres. — They love one another.
Nous nous parlions à nous-mêmes. — We were speaking to ourselves.

Subjective (or idiomatic) pronominal verbs have a reflexive pronoun because they are idiomatic; they do not have a reflexive or reciprocal meaning. Examples include se souvenir, se taire, se marier, and s'enfuir.

A pronominal verb can be used in a passive sense with an inanimate subject in the third-person, often the indefinite pronoun ça.

Ça se voit. — It shows. (Lit, "It sees itself.")
Ça se peut. — It is possible.
Le sol se nettoie facilement. — The floor can be cleaned easily.
La réunion s'est bien passée. — The meeting went well.
This construction may sound unusual to Anglophones, but it is a common alternative to using the passive voice when one wishes to avoid naming an agent.

Pronominal verbs have the same transitivity as their non-pronominal forms. For instance, appeler is transitive, so s'appeler is also transitive. When a pronominal verb is transitive, the reflexive pronoun is its direct object.
When a pronominal verb is intransitive, se is its indirect object.
Some verbs can have both direct and an indirect objects, in which case the reflexive pronoun is the indirect object.
When describing actions on parts of the body, Francophones avoid using possessive pronouns; instead, they use reflexive verbs with definite articles whenever possible.

While pronominal verbs take être as an auxiliary, they behave like avoir verbs because their participles actually only agree with preceding direct objects. In those examples and the next two, the reflexive pronouns are indirect objects and the direct objects follow the verb, so the participles are still invariable.

Vocabulary

1387 enfuir to escape 
1388 se taire to shut up 
1389 souvenir to remember 
1390 se raser to shave 
1391 se laver to wash
1392 se lever  to get up 
1393 se marier  to marry 
Passive Voice 
The passive voice describes any clause where the subject is not the agent of the verb in the clause.

Notice that the agent of a verb in the passive voice can be introduced by the preposition par ("by"). However, you can also use de with verbs expressing emotions or feelings, like aimer or respecter.

The passive voice is useful for emphasizing a verb's object or avoiding naming a verb's agent.

However, Francophones often avoid the passive voice by using the imprecise pronoun on in the active voice.

Remember that when multiple verbs are combined in a single construct, only the first verb can be conjugated; any following verbs must be infinitives or participles. When using the passive voice in the passé composé (or another compound tense), être takes avoir as an auxiliary. Thus, avoir must be conjugated, followed by être and the action verb in past participle form.

Note that the past participle of the action verb still must agree with the subject (as usual for être verbs).
Note that être is intransitive and cannot have a direct object, so its past participle été is always invariable.

Pluperfect 

The pluperfect is a type of verb form, generally treated as one of the tenses in certain languages, used to refer to an action at a time earlier than a time in the past already referred to.

In French the indicative pluperfect (Plus-que-parfait, "more than perfect") is formed by taking the appropriate form of the imperfect indicative of the auxiliaries avoir or être and adding the past participle, j'avais mangé.

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