Re: Is "She Loves Me, Omar" really a common phrase?



Donna Richoux wrote:

My French education stopped somewhere around learning all the rules
about object pronouns going between the subject and the verb.
What I do remember is that the partiple has to agree (number, gender)
when the past tense is conjugated with être, but not when it's
conjugated with avoir -- which is the case here.

So, does inserting the object "m'" change that? Does't seem likely, but
maybe so. What if it were this?

Omar a tué la femme.
Omar l'a tué.

The rules as I remember learning them are that:

For verbs conjugated with avoir, the participle agrees with the object when
the direct object precedes it, but remains invariable in the unmarked
(i.e., masculine) form when the direct object comes later in the sentence
than the participle, thus:

Omar a tué la femme. (Object after the participle.)
Omar a tué l'homme.

But:

Omar l'a tuée. (Object -- in this case, the feminine pronoun -- before
the participle: You can tell from the spelling of the participle that he
killed a female).
Omar l'a tué. (Object -- the masculine pronoun -- before the participle:
You can tell from the spelling that he killed a male.)
Elle est la femme qui Omar a tuée. (The relative pronoun inherits the
gender of its antecedent and precedes the participle, which therefore
agrees with it.)

For intransitive verbs conjugated with être, the participle agrees with the
subject.

However, when a reflexive verb (always with être!) takes a direct object as
well as the reflexive object AND the direct object precedes the verb, then
the participle agrees with the direct object: exactly the same deal as with
verbs that take avoir:

(Google is my friend, I confess; I found this excellent example at:
http://www.languageguide.org/francais/grammar/agreement/pdo_agreement.html )

Elle s'est brossée les dents. (She brushed her teeth;
word-by-word-literally "She brushed herself the teeth." Direct object after
the verb, so the participle agrees with the subject.)

Elle se les est brossés. (She brushed them; literally "She brushed herself
them." Participle agrees with preceeding direct object.)

--
Roland Hutchinson              Will play viola da gamba for food.

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