The agreement of the past participle is sometimes very difficult.
Among the main spoilsports of French grammar, pronominal verbs certainly deserve the palme d'or.
As Julien Soulié recalls in
The Whys of French
, until the 16th century, agreement of the past participle was the norm, but with the arrival of the grammarian Vaugelas, things changed, thus making the construction of certain sentences a real mess. -head.
However, the rule follows a certain logic: in the case of pronominal verbs, the auxiliary to
be
replaces the verb
to have
(“
she washed herself”
= “
she washed her own body
”).
Therefore in all cases where the auxiliary to
be
replaces the verb
to have
, it is advisable to keep the rule of agreement of the verb to
have
: "
she has washed
" (se is the COD before), "
she has washed the hair
", "
they fed
"...
To this general rule must be added certain exceptions.
For "essentially pronominal" verbs (which do not exist without a pronoun such as "to
abstain
", "
to remember
"...) and "of passive meaning" verbs ("
my books sold well
") the participle agrees with the subject.
We therefore distinguish: “
They missed each other by little
/
During the holidays, they missed each other a lot
”.