Past participle agreement
The agreement of the past participle is one of the greatest difficulties in French, as it is often necessary to think about the function of each word in the sentence. Orally, especially with the avoir auxiliary, chords are not always done correctly, but in writing, it is unforgiving. Here is a table with the main chord rules:
| Use | With être and status verbs | With Avoir | Alone |
| Agreement rule | with the subject | with the COD if it is placed before the verb | with the noun of which it is an epithet (behaves like a qualifying adjective.) |
| Example | elles sont rentrées, elles semblent fatiguées |
ils ont gagné : no COD => no agreement ils ont combattu toute une armée COD is after verb => no agreement toute l'armée qu'ils ont combattue COD is placed before verb => agreement |
Rentrées, les filles se reposent. |
Remark 1: The main difficulty with past participle agreement is to properly identify the antecedent CODs, especially personal and relative pronouns.
Remark 2: Note that in the case of status verbs, it is not the status verb but an attribute. We also talk about attribute verbs.
ils nous ont devancés
Les devoirs que tu as faits sont bons.