The sustained interrogative form and conjugation

Sustained interrogative form

The most sustained interrogative form is that of the inversion of the subject. A hyphen appears between the verb and the subject, which is then found to the right of the verb: verb + hyphen + subject + complement + ?. The rule is relatively simple in most cases, except in the case of the indicative present in the first person singular. This form raises a lot of questions and it is difficult to find answers.

When the pronoun je is placed after the verb, the final e becomes tonic and is traditionally replaced in writing by the é to reflect its pronunciation. With spelling reform, it can also be replaced by an è. The following rules remain unchanged.

- Eussé-je autant aimé l'enfant née d'un mariage heureux ? (Mauriac)
- Ô puissé-je, en expiation, souffrir de longues heures. (Proust)
- Aussi bien préféré-je... (Gide).

However, this construction remains very literary and is little used in everyday language, except to make a mockery of "beautiful language". The only inversions that are really used in oral language are extremely rare. The only verbs in the third monosyllabic group are the following : dis-je, puis-je, vais-je, dois-je, ai-je and suis-je which are about the only ones that are used frequently. Forms like viens-je or cours-je are replaced by est-ce que je viens, est-ce que je cours to avoid a joking effect.

The solution of modelling irregular verbs on -er verbs is considered literary barbarism: "Metté-je" (Balzac), "Voulé-je" (Giraudoux), "Ecrivé-je" (Queneau). This barbarism is not recent and not recommended.

The addition of the final in é may result in sound or graphic changes. As a general rule, spelling changes previously in use are not repeated:

- aie > ayé : je paie > payé-je
- aie > ayé : j'essaie > essayé-je
- oie > oyé : je broie > broyé-je
- oie > oyé : je nettoie > nettoyé-je
- oie > oyé : j'essuie > essuyé-je
- oie > oyé : j'ennuie > ennuyé-je
- è...e > e...é : je mène > mené-je
- è...e > e...é : je pèse > pesé-je
- è...e > é...é : j'altère > altéré-je
- è...e > é...é : je désespère > désespéré-je
- eler : j'appelle > appelé-je
- eter : je jette > jeté-je

Finally, it should be noted that only the indicative and conditional modes can take the interrogative form (in literary language, we sometimes find the pluperfect subjunctive, with a past conditional value of "past tense" : Eût-il dormi autant ?).