1.41:_Plus-que-parfait

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Le plus-que-parfait corresponds to the past perfect tense in English. We use it to talk about an action or situation that took place before another past action. The plus-que-parfait is often used when telling stories and anecdotes to provide background information on situations that occurred prior to the main action of the story.

How to conjugate the plus-que-parfait in French

To conjugate the plus-que-parfait we use the imperfect forms of avoir and &ecirc;tre as auxiliary verbs, followed by the participe pass&eacute; (past participle) of the main verb.

Agreement of the participe pass&eacute;

<ul>
 <li>When a verb takes &ecirc;tre as a help verb, the participle agrees in gender and number with the subject.</li>
 <li>For verbs that take avoir in the plus-que-parfait, the participle only agrees in gender and number with a direct object that comes before the verb. This direct object can take three possible forms: a personal pronoun (me, te, la, nous, vous, les), the relative pronoun que, or a noun placed before the verb (usually in questions and exclamations).</li>
</ul>

<dl class="example">
 <dd>&#9758; Elle avait achet&eacute; une voiture &rarr; Elle l&rsquo;avait achet&eacute;e.</dd>
</dl>

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