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# 23. Complementation

**On this page**

1. [1. Overview: the complement types](#1-overview-the-complement-types)
2. [2. Direct objects](#2-direct-objects)
3. [3. Indirect objects and the dative](#3-indirect-objects-and-the-dative)
4. [4. Prepositional arguments: `obl:arg`](#4-prepositional-arguments-oblarg)
5. [5. Finite complement clauses](#5-finite-complement-clauses)
6. [6. Infinitive complements](#6-infinitive-complements)
7. [7. Control and raising](#7-control-and-raising)
8. [8. Causative and perception verbs](#8-causative-and-perception-verbs)
9. [9. Predicative complements](#9-predicative-complements)
10. [10. Missing and implicit objects](#10-missing-and-implicit-objects)
11. [11. How Mova handles it](#11-how-mova-handles-it)
12. [12. Sources](#12-sources)

What a French verb takes after it is fixed by the verb: a direct object, an object with *à* or *de*, a clause with *que*, a bare infinitive, an infinitive with *à* or with *de*, or a combination of these. Two facts set French apart from English. The first is the pair of grammatical prepositions *à* and *de*, which carry most of the indirect objects and most of the infinitive complements, and whose choice cannot be predicted from the meaning: *commencer à partir* but *finir de manger*, *penser à quelqu'un* but *parler de quelqu'un*. The second is the pronoun system: an object or a prepositional complement that is a pronoun becomes a clitic before the verb (*le, lui, y, en*), and the clitic shows what kind of complement it replaces. This chapter gives the complement types, the objects and prepositional arguments, the finite complement clauses, the infinitive complements with control and raising, the causative and perception verbs, and the predicative complements, with the UD analysis and counts. The choice of mood in a complement clause is in chapter 24; the clitics and their order in chapter 21 and the pronouns chapter; the passive in chapter 28.

Contents:

1. Overview: the complement types
2. Direct objects
3. Indirect objects and the dative
4. Prepositional arguments: `obl:arg`
5. Finite complement clauses
6. Infinitive complements
7. Control and raising
8. Causative and perception verbs
9. Predicative complements
10. Missing and implicit objects
11. How Mova handles it
12. Sources

---

## 1. Overview: the complement types

| frame | example | UD relations (GSD) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| V + NP | *Il lit un livre.* | `obj` |
| V + *à* NP | *Il pense à sa mère. Il obéit à la loi.* | `obl:arg` (noun), `iobj` (clitic *lui, y*) |
| V + *de* NP | *Il parle de politique. Il dépend de ses parents.* | `obl:arg` (noun), `iobj` (clitic *en*) |
| V + NP + *à* NP | *Il donne un livre à Marie.* | `obj` + `obl:arg` |
| V + NP + *de* NP | *Il accuse Paul de vol.* | `obj` + `obl:arg` |
| V + *que*-clause | *Il dit qu'il viendra.* | `ccomp` with `mark` *que* |
| V + bare infinitive | *Il veut partir. Il doit partir.* | `xcomp` |
| V + *à* + infinitive | *Il commence à pleuvoir. Il apprend à nager.* | `xcomp` with `mark` *à* |
| V + *de* + infinitive | *Il décide de partir. Il essaie de comprendre.* | `xcomp` with `mark` *de* (GSD also `ccomp`) |
| V + NP + *de* + infinitive | *Il empêche Paul de partir.* | `obj` + `xcomp` |
| V + *à* NP + *de* + infinitive | *Il permet à Paul de partir. Il lui promet de venir.* | `obl:arg`/`iobj` + `xcomp` |
| V + NP + *à* + infinitive | *Il force Paul à partir.* | `obj` + `xcomp` |
| *faire* + infinitive | *Il fait réparer la voiture.* | `aux:caus`; the infinitive heads |
| perception verb / *laisser* + infinitive | *Je vois partir les enfants.* | `xcomp` |
| V + NP + predicate | *Je le trouve gentil. On l'a élu maire.* | `obj` + `xcomp` |
| V + predicate | *Il devient célèbre. Il semble fatigué.* | `xcomp` (the copula *être* is `cop` instead) |

The commonest forms of clausal complement in GSD (UD 2.18, all three files, 2026-11-06) are the infinitive `xcomp`: 1 284 bare, 838 with *de*, 562 with *à*, 55 with other prepositions (*par, pour*); the finite or infinitive `ccomp` is 1 435, of which 916 have *que*, 235 have *de* (infinitives that GSD annotates as `ccomp`) and 46 *à*. The verbs that govern the bare infinitive are led by *pouvoir* (535), *devoir* (237), *aller* (134) and *vouloir* (79); those with *de* by *permettre* (104), *décider* (88), *tenter* (62); those with *à* by *commencer* (44) and *parvenir* (42).

**Which preposition a verb takes is lexical.** There are tendencies — *à* for a goal, a beginning, an aim (*aboutir à, commencer à, chercher à, inciter à*), *de* for a source, an end, a cause (*finir de, cesser de, se plaindre de, s'excuser de*) — but no rule. A verb can change meaning with the preposition (*décider de partir* "decide to leave", *se décider à partir* "make up one's mind to leave"; *jouer à un jeu* / *jouer d'un instrument*; *penser à* "think of" / *penser de* "think about, have an opinion on"; *manquer à quelqu'un* "be missed by" / *manquer de quelque chose* "lack"). The lists are in every reference grammar (fraser-1921, §§278–281), and they are the content of a valency lexicon (§11).

## 2. Direct objects

A direct object is a noun phrase, a clitic (*le, la, les, me, te, se, nous, vous*), *en* with a quantity, or a clause. In GSD `obj` is 13 596 words (340 per 10 000 words); in the spoken ParisStories 437 per 10 000, because the spoken clause has more verbs and fewer nouns.

**The clitic object** stands before the verb, or before the auxiliary in a compound tense (*Je l'ai vu*), or after a positive imperative (*Prends-le*). In UD it is `obj` of the main verb, whatever its place (chapter 21, §7).

**The *en* object.** A partitive or indefinite object that is replaced by a pronoun becomes *en*: *Tu as du pain ? — J'en ai. Il a trois enfants → Il en a trois*. The quantity word stays after the verb. In GSD *en* is `iobj` 112 times and `obj` when it is the whole object.

**The object of light verbs.** *Avoir lieu, faire partie, mettre fin, prendre part, faire face, donner lieu* — the noun is not a referring object but part of the predicate; GSD labels it `obj:lvc` (554 times; the commonest are *avoir lieu* and *faire partie*).

**Agreement.** A clitic object (and a relative *que*) before a past participle with *avoir* makes the participle agree with it: *Les lettres que j'ai écrites. Je les ai vues.* The rule is in the auxiliaries chapter; an analysis of past participle agreement in French and Italian derives its optionality with a fronted object from a choice between two kinds of agreement operation, and its obligatoriness with a derived subject (passive, unaccusative) from the structure of the clause (kobayashi-2022). The agreement is audible only in some participles (*écrite* /ekʁit/, *prise* /pʁiz/ against *vue* /vy/).

**No double object.** French has no dative shift: *Il donne un livre à Marie*, never **Il donne Marie un livre*. A verb has at most one direct object.

## 3. Indirect objects and the dative

**The *à* object of a person.** *Donner, dire, écrire, envoyer, montrer, prêter, promettre, permettre, demander* take a direct object and an *à*-phrase for the recipient or addressee; *obéir, plaire, ressembler, nuire, téléphoner, répondre, sourire* take only the *à*-phrase. A pronoun recipient is the dative clitic *lui, leur* (*me, te, nous, vous* are both accusative and dative): *Je lui donne le livre. Il leur obéit.*

**The UD analysis in GSD.** Only the clitic is `iobj`; the noun phrase with *à* is `obl:arg`. *Je donne le livre à Marie*: *Marie* `obl:arg` with `case` *à*. *Je lui donne le livre*: *lui* `iobj`. In GSD there are 894 `iobj`, all of them pronouns: *lui* 270, *y* 114, *en* 112, *vous* 64, *dont* 57, *nous* 55, *leur* 50, *se* 43 (2026-11-06). The relative *dont* as `iobj` is the relative of a *de*-complement (*le livre dont je parle*), *y* of an *à*-complement of a thing (*J'y pense*).

**Not every *à*-phrase is a dative.** With *penser, songer, renoncer, s'intéresser, faire attention, tenir*, the *à*-complement of a person is not replaced by *lui* but kept as a strong pronoun: *Je pense à elle* (**Je lui pense*). With a thing, both kinds take *y*: *J'y pense*. This distinguishes the true dative (*lui*) from a prepositional argument with *à* (strong pronoun or *y*) and is the test the grammars use.

**The extended dative.** French uses the dative clitic for a person affected by the event who is not a recipient:

- the **possessor dative** with body parts and close possessions, where English uses a possessive: *Il lui a pris la main* "He took her hand", *Je me lave les mains* "I wash my hands", *On lui a volé sa voiture* "Someone stole his car";
- the **dative of interest** (benefit or harm): *Il lui a réparé son vélo* "He repaired her bike for her";
- the **ethical dative** of speech, a first- or second-person clitic with no role: % *Goûte-moi ça !* "Just taste that!"

These datives are `iobj` in UD like the recipient; the treebanks do not mark the difference.

**Two clitics.** A direct and an indirect clitic can combine in a fixed order (*Il me le donne, Il le lui donne*; chapter 21, §6.3), but a first- or second-person direct object cannot combine with a dative clitic: **Il me lui présente* must be *Il me présente à lui*.

## 4. Prepositional arguments: `obl:arg`

GSD distinguishes the prepositional phrases a verb selects (`obl:arg`) from the adjuncts (`obl:mod`). In GSD (2026-11-06) the prepositional arguments of verbs are led by the preposition *à* (3 196), *de* (1 549), *dans* (831), *avec* (242), *par* (223), *en* (134); 469 have no preposition. The commonest verb–preposition pairs are *naître à* (262) and *naître* with a bare date or place (240), *se situer dans* (229) and *à* (135), *faire de* (126), *participer à* (123), *s'agir de* (106), *donner à* (83), *mettre à* (75), *appartenir à* (64), *se composer de* (58), *parler de* (50).

The figures show what the distinction captures and where it is a decision of the annotators: *naître à Paris* and *se situer dans la région* are arguments because the verb needs a place, while *travailler à Paris* is an adjunct. The French GSD changelog says the split was made by hand at first for a part of the treebank and extended by rule (chapter 20, §9), so the boundary in the data is that of the guidelines, not an independent test.

**The pronoun test.** The grammars tell an argument from an adjunct by its pronoun: an argument with *à* is replaced by *y* or *lui*, an argument with *de* by *en* or *dont*, while an adjunct is replaced by an adverb (*là, alors*) or not at all. *Il participe au projet → Il y participe. Il parle de politique → Il en parle. Il travaille à Paris → Il y travaille* — the last shows that *y* also replaces locative adjuncts, so the test is one-way: a phrase that cannot be replaced by *y/en* is an adjunct, one that can is not necessarily an argument.

**Verbs with both an object and a prepositional argument.** *Accuser quelqu'un de, remercier quelqu'un de, prévenir quelqu'un de, empêcher quelqu'un de* (object + *de*); *inviter quelqu'un à, aider quelqu'un à, encourager quelqu'un à* (object + *à*); *demander quelque chose à quelqu'un, emprunter quelque chose à quelqu'un* (object + *à* source).

**Prepositions before a clause.** A preposition cannot take a *que*-clause directly; the verbs with *à* and *de* insert *ce*: *Je m'attends à ce qu'il vienne. Il tient à ce que tout soit prêt. Je me réjouis de ce que tu sois là.* With *de*, the bare *que* is common: *Je me réjouis que tu sois là*. With *à*, *ce que* is required in the standard.

## 5. Finite complement clauses

**The complementizer *que* is never omitted.** *Je sais qu'il viendra*, never **Je sais il viendra* (the English zero *that* has no French equivalent). *Que* elides to *qu'* before a vowel, and it is repeated before each coordinated clause: *Il dit qu'il viendra et qu'il restera.* In UD *que* is `SCONJ` `mark` of the verb of its clause, and the clause is `ccomp` of the governing verb.

**What governs it.** The governors of `ccomp` in GSD (2026-11-06) are led by *permettre* (110, mostly infinitives with *de*), *falloir* (106: *il faut que …*, *il faut* + infinitive), *afin* (88: the clause of *afin que, afin de*, which GSD attaches as a `ccomp` of *afin*), *dire* (71), *savoir* (47), *penser* (35), *estimer* (30), *affirmer* (29), *montrer* (27), *noter* (26) and *plus* (26, the comparative clause: chapter 22, §9). The verbs of saying and thinking are the core; most of them take the indicative (chapter 24).

**Mood.** The finite `ccomp` verbs of GSD are 395 indicative, 65 subjunctive and 40 conditional; 406 are infinitives and 529 non-verbal predicates (copular clauses). The subjunctive is governed by the verb: *vouloir, souhaiter, falloir, douter, craindre* and many others (chapter 24, §3).

**Indirect questions** are complement clauses introduced by *si* "whether" or a question word: *Je me demande s'il viendra. Dis-moi où tu vas.* They keep the order of a statement (chapter 26, §9). In GSD *si* introduces 14 `ccomp`.

**Complement clauses of nouns and adjectives**: *l'idée que tout est possible* (`acl`), *heureux que tu sois là* (`ccomp` of the adjective). See chapter 22.

**Clausal subjects**: *Qu'il parte m'étonne* is written French; speech extraposes with *ça* or *il* (*Ça m'étonne qu'il parte*). See chapter 21, §3.

## 6. Infinitive complements

**The same-subject rule.** French uses an infinitive instead of a *que*-clause when the subject of the complement is the same as the subject (or the object) of the main verb: *Je veux partir*, not **Je veux que je parte*; *Il croit vous avoir vu* "He thinks he has seen you"; *Dites-leur de s'en aller* "Tell them to go away" (fraser-1921, §283). With verbs of will and emotion that take the subjunctive the rule is strict: a subjunctive clause whose subject is the same person as the main subject is ungrammatical. This disjoint-reference effect is called **obviation**. A formal acceptability study tested six factors proposed in the literature as weakening it (among them a passive, a periphrastic past, a negation and a modal in the subjunctive clause, and coordination) and found that, averaged over speakers, only coordination clearly did so — and only with the coreferent subject in the second conjunct (*Je veux que tu restes et que je parte* is rated far better than *Je veux que je parte et que tu restes*); individual speakers varied, and the authors conclude that the classic introspective judgments should not be taken as the general pattern (feldhausen-2021). With verbs of saying and thinking, which take the indicative, both forms are possible: *Il pense qu'il a raison* / *Il pense avoir raison*.

**Bare infinitives** follow the modals and quasi-modals (*pouvoir, devoir, vouloir, savoir, falloir, valoir mieux, oser*), the verbs of motion (*aller, venir, partir, courir, monter, descendre, rentrer*: *Il va chercher le pain, Viens voir*), the verbs of opinion and declaration with the same subject (*croire, penser, espérer, affirmer, prétendre, déclarer*), the verbs of preference (*aimer, préférer, aimer mieux, désirer, détester*), and the perception verbs and *laisser* (§8) (fraser-1921, §278). *Aller* + infinitive is also the near future (*Il va pleuvoir*) and *venir de* + infinitive the recent past (*Il vient de partir*); in UD both are full verbs with an `xcomp`.

**Infinitives with *à***: *aider à, apprendre à, arriver à, s'attendre à, chercher à, commencer à, consentir à, continuer à, se décider à, hésiter à, inviter à, se mettre à, parvenir à, penser à, réussir à, servir à, tenir à* (fraser-1921, §279).

**Infinitives with *de***: *accepter de, s'arrêter de, cesser de, choisir de, craindre de, décider de, se dépêcher de, essayer de, éviter de, finir de, menacer de, oublier de, refuser de, regretter de, risquer de, tenter de*, and the verbs with an object or a dative: *dire à quelqu'un de, demander à quelqu'un de, permettre à quelqu'un de, conseiller à quelqu'un de, empêcher quelqu'un de, prier quelqu'un de* (fraser-1921, §280).

**Both, with a difference**: *commencer à* / *commencer de* (literary), *continuer à* / *de*, *s'efforcer de* / *à*, *obliger quelqu'un à* / *être obligé de* (fraser-1921, §281).

**The UD analysis.** The infinitive is `xcomp` of the governing verb and the preposition is its `mark`, not a `case`: *Il a décidé de partir*: *partir* `xcomp` of *décidé*, *de* `mark` of *partir*. GSD is not fully consistent: *permettre de* + infinitive is `xcomp` 104 times and `ccomp` about as often; the `ccomp` with *de* (235) are mostly such infinitives. A tool that wants "the infinitive complements" must take both relations.

**Negation and clitics of the infinitive.** The clitics of an infinitive stand before it (*Il veut le voir*; chapter 21, §7.2), and *ne pas* stands as a block before the infinitive and its clitics (*Il préfère ne pas le voir*; chapter 27).

## 7. Control and raising

The understood subject of an infinitive complement is found in one of three ways:

| type | the subject of the infinitive is | verbs | example |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| subject control | the subject of the main verb | *vouloir, essayer de, décider de, promettre à X de, refuser de, oser* | *Il a promis de reconstruire l'hôpital* (fr-ud-train_08288) |
| object control | the object or dative of the main verb | *permettre à X de, dire à X de, empêcher X de, forcer X à, inviter X à, aider X à* | *Son contrat lui permet de vivre sur place* (fr-ud-dev_00780) |
| raising | the subject of the main verb, which has no role of its own | *sembler, paraître, s'avérer, se révéler; devoir, pouvoir* (epistemic) | *La réponse semble être oui* (fr-ud-dev_01286) |
| arbitrary | anyone | *il faut, il est interdit de* | *Il faut partir* |

*Promettre* is the classic exception: it has a dative but subject control (*Il lui a promis de venir*: he will come), against *permettre* with object control (*Il lui a permis de venir*: she may come). Raising verbs allow an impersonal construction with a finite clause (*Il semble que la réponse soit oui*) and keep the expletive subject of the infinitive (*Il semble pleuvoir*), which control verbs do not (**Il essaie de pleuvoir*).

**How GSD records it.** UD has no enhanced graph for French (the `DEPS` column is empty), so the understood subject is not an arc. GSD instead puts a `Subject=` attribute in the MISC column of the infinitive (chapter 20, §7). Its values in GSD (2026-11-06): `SubjRaising` 3 892, `Generic` 1 543, `Instantiated` 736, `ObjRaising` 343, `OblRaising` 251. In the examples above *reconstruire* (after *promis*) has `SubjRaising`, *vivre* (after *lui permet*) `OblRaising` — the subject is the dative clitic — and the infinitive *être* after *semble* `SubjRaising`. The names cover control and raising alike: the attribute says where the subject is, not whether the main verb gives it a role.

**Long passives and other traces of restructuring.** With some verbs (*finir de, commencer à, achever de*) a passive can apply across the main verb and the infinitive together. A historical study of clitic climbing in French shows that until Middle French a clitic of the infinitive had to climb to the main verb (*Je le veux voir* "I want to see it"), and that climbing was lost before the 19th century; the authors argue that French kept the restructuring itself — the single clause formed by the main verb and the infinitive — and lost only most of its visible effects, keeping some such as long passives (olivier-2023). *Je le veux voir* is now archaic or literary, *Je veux le voir* the norm; with *faire, laisser* and the perception verbs the clitic still climbs (§8).

## 8. Causative and perception verbs

**Causative *faire*.** *Faire* + infinitive forms a single predicate: the infinitive follows *faire* directly, its clitics go before *faire*, and its subject — the person made to act, the causee — follows the infinitive:

> Il fait chanter les enfants. → Il les fait chanter. *he makes sing the children* — "He makes the children sing."

When the infinitive has an object, the causee takes *à* (or *par* when the action is done by an agent for the causer): *Il fait lire le livre aux enfants → Il le leur fait lire*; *Il a fait construire la maison par un architecte*. With a pronoun causee of a transitive infinitive the clitic is dative (*lui, leur*).

> **fr-ud-train_03470** · UD French GSD En 1444, Guillaume d'Aubusson, compagnon d'armes de Jeanne d'Arc et seigneur du Theil, fait construire un premier sanctuaire. "In 1444 Guillaume d'Aubusson, Joan of Arc's companion in arms and lord of Le Theil, had a first sanctuary built."

**The UD analysis.** *Faire* is `aux:caus` and the infinitive heads the clause (chapter 20, §7). The causer, the subject of *faire*, is `nsubj:caus` of the infinitive (*Guillaume* above), the infinitive's own object is `obj` (*sanctuaire*), and the causee is `obj:agent` (a noun or accusative clitic: *les enfants, les*) or `iobj:agent` (the dative clitic). In GSD (2026-11-06) *faire* is `aux:caus` 250 times; the causative heads have 131 `nsubj:caus`, 122 `obj`, 111 `obj:agent`, 24 `iobj:agent` and 9 *par*-agents (`obl:agent`). An *à*-causee noun is not given a special label (it is among the `obl` with *à*).

**Se faire + infinitive** is a passive of experience or of action: *Il s'est fait voler sa voiture* "He had his car stolen", *Elle se fait aider par sa sœur* "She gets her sister to help her". See chapter 28.

**Laisser and the perception verbs** (*voir, entendre, regarder, sentir, écouter*) take an infinitive with its own subject in two orders: *Je vois partir les enfants* and *Je vois les enfants partir*; with a pronoun, the clitic climbs: *Je les vois partir*. In GSD they are not auxiliaries: the infinitive is an `xcomp` of *voir* (37), *laisser* (27), *entendre* (11), *regarder* (1), and the noun subject of the infinitive is an `obj` of the main verb or of the infinitive depending on its position. *Laisser* also allows the causative construction with *à*: *Il a laissé lire la lettre à son frère*. A transitive infinitive after these verbs can have a passive sense: *J'ai vu bâtir cette maison* "I saw this house being built" (fraser-1921, §284).

The asymmetry between *faire* (`aux:caus`, the infinitive the head) and *laisser/voir* (`xcomp`, the main verb the head) is a decision of the French UD guidelines (GSD changelog 2.1), not a difference that UD makes in other languages, and it changes the shape of the tree for constructions that French grammar treats together.

## 9. Predicative complements

**Subject predicates** after linking verbs other than *être*: *devenir, rester, demeurer, sembler, paraître, avoir l'air, passer pour, se révéler, s'avérer*. *Il devient célèbre. Elle reste calme. Il passe pour un génie.* In UD the predicate is `xcomp` of the verb (415 adjectives, 547 nouns, 186 names among the non-verbal `xcomp` of GSD). Only *être* is a copula (`cop`).

**Object predicates** after verbs of naming, choosing, judging and making: *nommer, élire, appeler, croire, trouver, juger, rendre, faire*: *On l'a élu maire. Je le trouve gentil. Cela le rend heureux. Ils l'ont fait président.* The predicate agrees with the object and is `xcomp` of the verb; GSD also uses `xcomp` with *comme* for *considérer comme, traiter de* (58 nouns with *comme*): *On le considère comme un expert.*

**Bare predicate nouns** take no article when they name a function or a status (*élu maire, nommé ministre*) and an article when they describe (*Je le trouve un peu naïf*, *C'est un ami*).

## 10. Missing and implicit objects

**Missing objects in *à*-infinitives.** In *un livre à lire, une maison à vendre, Ce texte est facile à lire, J'ai une lettre à écrire*, the object of the infinitive is missing and is the noun the phrase modifies or predicates on. An analysis of these missing-object constructions treats them as an infinitival passive: the logical object becomes the external argument, the logical subject remains available for control, and a corpus study shows that control and raising verbs can stand between *à* and the verb with the missing object (*des problèmes à essayer de résoudre*) (multner-2022). In UD the infinitive is `acl` of the noun or `xcomp` of *être*/the adjective, and the missing object is not represented.

**Implicit objects.** Some transitive verbs drop a generic or recoverable object: *Il mange. Elle lit. Il boit* ("he drinks", of alcohol). Spoken French drops a definite object more freely than the written language in replies: % *— Tu as vu le film ? — Oui, j'ai vu.* The standard keeps the clitic (*Oui, je l'ai vu*). The null object is not represented in UD.

## 11. How Mova handles it

**What is done.** The parser learns the complement relations from the GSD training trees (`en xpos-fill`, chapter 20, §12). `obj`, `iobj`, `ccomp`, `xcomp`, `mark` are in Mova's set; `obl:arg` and `obl:mod` fold to `obl`, `aux:caus` to `aux`, `nsubj:caus` to `nsubj`, `obj:agent` to `obj`, `iobj:agent` to `iobj`, `obj:lvc` to `obj`.

Traces of the parser trained on the GSD training file (`en explain`, 12 epochs, beam 8, CPU, 2026-11-06):

| sentence | what Mova gives |
| --- | --- |
| *Elle veut partir.* | right: *partir* `xcomp` of *veut* |
| *Il commence à pleuvoir.* | right: *pleuvoir* `xcomp`, *à* `mark` (*Il* is `nsubj`, where GSD has `expl:subj`) |
| *Je lui ai promis de venir.* | right: *lui* `iobj`, *venir* `xcomp` with `mark` *de* |
| *Il a décidé de partir.* | half right: *partir* `xcomp` with `mark` *de*, but *Il* is labelled `nsubj:pass` |
| *Il a un livre à lire.* | right: *lire* `acl` of *livre* with `mark` *à* |
| *Il semble être malade.* | right in the folded labels: *Il* `expl`, *malade* `xcomp` with `cop` *être* |
| *Elle a fait réparer la voiture.* | right: *réparer* the root, *fait* and *a* `aux`, *voiture* `obj` (in Mova's labels `aux:caus` is `aux`) |
| *Il a laissé partir les enfants.* | right: *partir* `xcomp` of *laissé*, *enfants* `obj` of *partir* |
| *Il faut partir.* | *partir* `ccomp` of *faut* (GSD has both `ccomp` and `xcomp` here) |
| *Je pense qu'il a raison.* | half right: *a* `ccomp` of *pense*, but *qu'il* is one token and becomes the `nsubj`, so there is no `mark` |
| *Je veux que tu partes.* | wrong: *tu* tagged as a possessive determiner, *partes* as a plural noun, the clause an `obl` with `case` *que* |
| *Je les ai vus partir.* | wrong: *les* tagged as an article (`det`), *Je* `nsubj:pass`, *partir* `xcomp` of *vus* |

The infinitive complements are learned well, because the GSD trees for them are regular and the words (*de, à* + infinitive) are not affected by tokenization. The finite complement fails on two points: the elided *qu'* stays joined to the next word, and the subjunctive *partes* is unknown to the tagger, which takes its *-s* for a plural noun (the tagger has 84.8% accuracy on unknown words, chapter 20). The object clitics are confused with the articles that have the same form (*les, la, le, l'*).

**What is not done.**

- **No valency lexicon.** Mova has no French lexicon of which verb takes *à*, *de*, a bare infinitive or *que* (§1). Without it the parser cannot tell `obl:arg` from `obl:mod` (they are folded anyway), and a *de*-infinitive cannot be checked against the verb.
- **No control resolution.** The `Subject=` attribute of GSD is not read and not predicted (the parser does not predict MISC), and the frames reader has no rule for subject control, object control or raising. In *Il lui a permis de venir* it would not know who comes.
- **Causatives.** The tree shape of *faire* + infinitive is learned, but `nsubj:caus` folds to `nsubj` and `obj:agent` to `obj`, so the causer and the causee look like an ordinary subject and object of the infinitive: a frames reader would make *Guillaume* the builder.
- **Datives.** The possessor and ethical datives are `iobj` like the recipient; nothing distinguishes them.

## 12. Sources

- Fraser, Squair & Coleman, *The New Fraser and Squair Complete French Grammar* (1921), §§278–284 (the infinitive without preposition, with *à*, with *de*, the infinitive for a subordinate clause, passive force after perception verbs): `fraser-1921`.
- Feldhausen & Buchczyk, *Revisiting subjunctive obviation in French: a formal acceptability judgment study* (Glossa, 2021): `feldhausen-2021`.
- Olivier, Sevdali & Folli, *Clitic climbing and restructuring in the history of French* (Glossa, 2023): `olivier-2023`.
- Aguila-Multner & Crysmann, *French missing object constructions* (Glossa, 2022): `multner-2022`.
- Kobayashi, *Past participle agreement in French and Italian: a two-Agree analysis* (Glossa, 2022): `kobayashi-2022`.
- UD French GSD (and its changelog), ParisStories, UD 2.18; sentences cited by `sent_id`; counts made with `awk` over the CoNLL-U files, 2026-11-06.
- Mova: [`en/src/main.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/en/) (`xpos_of`, `explain`), [`en/src/gram.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/en/) (`Rel`, `base`), [`en/src/conllu.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/en/) (subtype fallback), [`prag/src/frames.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/prag/).
- The full list is in [Sources](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/fr/sources/).
- [← previous 22. Phrases](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/fr/22-phrases/)
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