Participe passé : récapitulation — être, avoir, COD placé avant, pronominaux
P48.articles-and-agreement.16 · Audience: guest, language-pro, it-ml
Unité GR-14 · campagne 10 · les trois règles d'accord, réunies sur une page.
Unit GR-10 gave you the two base rules; this closing unit of the agreement pillar adds the third — pronominal verbs — and stacks all three into one decision table you can run in order.
| Structure | Agreement with… | Example |
|---|---|---|
| être + participle | the subject | Marie est partie. Ils sont venus. |
| avoir, COD after the verb | nothing — invariable | Il a acheté des fleurs. |
| avoir, COD placed before | that preceding COD | les fleurs qu'il a achetées |
| pronominal, se = COD | the reflexive pronoun (= subject) | Elle s'est levée. Ils se sont rencontrés. |
| pronominal, COD follows | nothing — invariable | Elles se sont lavé les mains. |
| pronominal, se = COI | nothing — invariable | Ils se sont parlé. Elles se sont écrit. |
The pronominal rows are the new material, and one question resolves them: what is se doing? If se is the direct object — she raises herself: elle s'est levée — agree. If the direct object is elsewhere in the sentence — she washed the hands: elles se sont lavé les mains — the participle freezes, exactly like the avoir + COD-after case. And if the base verb takes à (parler à, écrire à, téléphoner à), then se is an indirect object and nothing agrees: ils se sont parlé.
For a Russian speaker the trap is that -ся verbs give no such signal — Russian never asks where the object sits. French makes the spelling depend on it, while the pronunciation usually stays identical (levé/levée), so this is above all a written discipline. The practice cycles through all three regimes until the se-question becomes the reflex.
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