French Semi-Auxiliary Verbs - Lawless French Grammar


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Verbes semi-auxiliaires

In contrast with auxiliary verbs, which help create compound tenses and moods, semi-auxiliary verbs are used with infinitives to influence their meaning, tense, mood, or aspect. Some French semi-auxiliaries are equivalent to English modal verbs, and most of the top 10 French verbs can or must be used as semi-auxiliaries.

Whenever a verb is followed directly or indirectly by an infinitive and the subject of the two verbs is the same, the first is being used as a semi-auxiliary.

Par exemple…

J’espère voir la tour Eiffel.		I hope to see the Eiffel Tower.
J’essaie de lire.		I’m trying to read.
Je vais me brosser les dents.		I’m going to brush my teeth.
J’hésite à te le dire.		I hesitate to tell you.

As you can see, there may be prepositions and/or pronouns in between the semi-auxiliary and the infinitive. The semi-auxiliary can also be conjugated into different tenses and moods.

Par exemple…

Je voudrais la voir.		I’d like to see it.
J’ai refusé de lire.		I refused to read.
Je pourrai me brosser les dents.		I’ll be able to brush my teeth.
J’hésitais à te le dire.		I hesitated to tell you.

Semi-auxiliary verbs

This list is not definitive, but it should give you a good sense of how semi-auxiliaries work. Click the links on the left for conjugation tables, and the links on the right for detailed lessons.

adorer	to adore doing
aider à	to help to do
aimer	to like, love doing	aimer lesson
aller	to be going to do	aller lesson aller – near future
arrêter de	to stop doing
arriver à	to manage to do	arriver lesson
avoir à	to have to	avoir lesson
chercher à	to look to do	chercher lesson
choisir de	to choose to do
continuer à/de	to continue to do
croire	to believe (that one) does	croire lesson
désirer	to desire to
détester	to hate doing
devoir	to have to do	devoir lesson
s’efforcer de	to endeavor to do
espérer	to hope to do
essayer de	to try doing
être à	to be in the process of	être lesson
faillir	to almost do	faillir lesson
faire	to have someone do	faire – causative
falloir	to be necessary to do	falloir lesson
hésiter à	to hesitate to do
inviter à	to invite to do
jurer de	to swear, vow to do
laisser	to let something happen	laisser lesson
manquer de	something nearly happened	manquer lesson
paraître	to appear, seem to be
partir	to leave in order to, to go to
passer	to call/drop in on, call for, go to	passer lesson
penser	to be thinking of, consider doing	penser lesson
persister à	to persist in doing
pouvoir	can, may, might, to be able to	pouvoir lesson
préférer	to prefer doing
prétendre	to claim to
promettre de	to promise to do
refuser de	to refuse to do
risquer de	to risk doing, to possibly do
savoir	to know how to	savoir lesson
sembler	to seem to be
sortir de	(informal) to have just done s.t
souhaiter	to hope to do
tâcher de	to try doing
tenter de	to attempt doing
venir venir de	to come (in order) to to have just done	venir lesson venir – recent past
vouloir	to want to do	vouloir lesson

When using a semi-auxiliary verb with a direct object, that object always goes with the infinitive rather than the semi-auxiliary. Therefore, there is never any agreement with avoir verbs here.

Word order with semi-auxiliary verbs

Note that verbs like dire and permettre are not semi-auxiliaries, because the subject is telling/permitting someone else to do something. With semi-auxiliaries, the subject of both verbs is the same.

Similarly, verbs like entendre and voir are not semi-auxiliaries, because the subject is perceiving someone else doing something. These are known as verbs of perception.