24. Coordination and subordination

French joins clauses in two ways. Coordination puts two units of the same kind side by side with et, ou, mais, ni, car, or, donc or with nothing, and neither depends on the other. Subordination makes one clause a part of another: a complement (Je sais qu'il vient), a modifier of a noun (the relative clause, chapter 25) or an adverbial (Je pars parce qu'il pleut). A French subordinate clause is always introduced by a word — que, a relative pronoun, si, a conjunction — and that word, together with the governing verb or noun, chooses the mood of its verb: indicative, subjunctive or conditional. This chapter gives coordination and its UD analysis, the subordinating conjunctions, the subjunctive and what triggers it, the conditional sentence with si, the sequence of tenses, and the non-finite adverbial clauses (infinitive, gerund, absolute participle). The complement clause itself is in chapter 23, relatives in 25, indirect questions in 26.

Contents:

Coordination
Coordination in UD and in the treebanks
Subordinating conjunctions
The subjunctive: what it is and where it stands
The subjunctive triggers
Conditions: si and the other conjunctions
The sequence of tenses
Non-finite adverbial clauses
Parataxis and loose joining
How Mova handles it
Sources

1. Coordination

The coordinating conjunctions are et "and", ou "or", mais "but", ni "nor", car "for, because", or "now, yet" (in argument), donc "so" (an adverb in UD); the school list mais, ou, et, donc, or, ni, car puts them together. In GSD the commonest words in the cc relation are et 8 117, ou 868, mais 832, puis 263, ainsi 160, car 127, dont 96 (in enumerations: cent passagers, dont dix enfants), ni 64, c'est-à-dire 52, soit 34, voire 32; in the spoken ParisStories et 1 047, mais 274, donc 47, ou 35, ni 17 (UD 2.18, 2026-11-06).

What can be coordinated. Any two units of the same function: nouns, adjectives, prepositional phrases, infinitives, finite verbs, clauses. Le chat et le chien. Grand et fort. À Paris ou à Lyon. Il est venu et il est reparti. Units of different categories can be coordinated when they share a function: un homme riche et qui le sait (adjective + relative), Je veux du pain et que tu partes is odd; the closer the categories the better.

Repetition of the little words. French repeats what English shares:

the determiner before each noun: le père et la mère (*le père et mère, except in fixed pairs: les us et coutumes);
à, de, en before each noun phrase: Il pense à Paul et à Marie;
the subject clitic when the verbs have their own tense or auxiliary: Il est venu et il est reparti; it may be shared when the tense is shared: Il lit et écrit. In GSD 32% of coordinated verbs have their own subject; in the spoken ParisStories 75% (2026-11-06): speech repeats the subject clitic almost always;
que before each coordinated complement clause: Il dit qu'il viendra et qu'il restera;
a subordinating conjunction is taken up by que: Quand il arrive et qu'il voit la maison, …; Comme il pleuvait et que la nuit tombait, ….

Correlative forms. Et … et "both … and", ou … ou, soit … soit "either … or", ni … ni "neither … nor" (with ne before the verb: Il ne boit ni vin ni bière; chapter 27), non seulement … mais (encore) "not only … but also", tantôt … tantôt "now … now".

Agreement with coordinated subjects. Two singular subjects with et take a plural verb: Paul et Marie sont partis. With persons, the first person wins, then the second: Toi et moi (nous) partons, Vous et lui (vous) êtes d'accord, and a resumptive plural pronoun is common (fraser-1921 notes the "pleonastic" nous, vous). With ou and ni the verb is singular or plural depending on whether the alternatives exclude each other: Paul ou Pierre viendra (one of them), Ni l'un ni l'autre ne sont venus / n'est venu. Gender: a masculine and a feminine noun make a masculine plural adjective: un père et une mère attentifs.

The meanings. Et adds, ou offers an alternative (inclusive or exclusive by context; ou bien exclusive), mais contrasts, ni adds negatives. Car gives a reason and is coordinating: its clause cannot be placed first and cannot be the focus of a cleft (*C'est car il pleut que …), unlike parce que (§3). Or introduces a fact that changes the argument (Il devait venir ; or, il est malade). Puis "then" is coordinating in UD.

2. Coordination in UD and in the treebanks

The first conjunct is the head. Every later conjunct is conj of the first, and the conjunction is cc of the conjunct it precedes: in le chat et le chien, chien is conj of chat and et is cc of chien. Shared dependents (a subject shared by two verbs, a determiner shared by two nouns) attach to the first conjunct; UD French has no enhanced graph to propagate them, so the subject of écrit in Il lit et écrit is found only by reading the first conjunct.

Counts. GSD has 14 243 conj and 10 833 cc; 3 041 coordinations join two verbs (2026-11-06). A conj without a cc is a list item or an asyndetic coordination: 27% of the conj in GSD, 53% in ParisStories, 51% in Rhapsodie. Spoken French chains clauses with et, et puis, et donc, mais or with nothing.

Ellipsis in coordination. A second conjunct may lack its verb (gapping: Paul aime le thé et Marie le café) or share a right-hand element (Il a acheté et elle a vendu des actions); both are in chapter 29. The verbless remnant is orphan in UD.

3. Subordinating conjunctions

The complementizer que introduces complement clauses (chapter 23) and is the last element of most compound conjunctions. It is never omitted.

The conjunctions. In GSD (2026-11-06) the markers (mark) of adverbial clauses (advcl) are led by pour (808, mostly pour + infinitive), en (342, the gerund), si (255), que (152), alors que (120), lorsque (115), comme (110), après (87), quand (81), bien que (62), tandis que (61), sans (54), puisque (47); 1 106 adverbial clauses have no marker (participle and absolute constructions, juxtaposed clauses). GSD is not uniform with compound conjunctions: bien que, alors que, tandis que are one mark with que as its fixed dependent, while pour que has two mark words, pour and que, on the verb (fr-ud-train_08043).

meaning	conjunctions	mood
time: simultaneous, after	quand, lorsque, pendant que, tandis que, alors que, comme, dès que, aussitôt que, depuis que, après que, une fois que, chaque fois que	indicative
time: before, until	avant que, jusqu'à ce que, en attendant que	subjunctive
cause	parce que, puisque, comme (first in the sentence), étant donné que, vu que, du moment que	indicative
consequence	si bien que, de sorte que, de (telle) manière que (result), si … que, tellement … que, tant … que	indicative
purpose	pour que, afin que, de sorte que, de manière que (aim), de peur que, de crainte que	subjunctive
concession	bien que, quoique, encore que, sans que	subjunctive
	même si, alors que, tandis que (contrast)	indicative
condition	si	indicative (§6)
	à condition que, pourvu que, à moins que, pour peu que, en admettant que, supposé que	subjunctive
	au cas où, dans le cas où	conditional
comparison	comme, ainsi que, de même que, plus … que	indicative

De sorte que and de manière que take the indicative for a result and the subjunctive for an aim: Il a parlé de sorte que tout le monde a compris / Parle de sorte que tout le monde comprenne.

Parce que, puisque, car, comme. Parce que gives a cause that is new information and can answer pourquoi (Pourquoi pars-tu ? — Parce qu'il pleut); puisque a cause the hearer is taken to know; comme at the head of the sentence a cause that is background; car a justification added after the main clause. The traditional view that car expresses subjective relations (opinions, justifications of speech acts) and belongs to a higher register was tested in a corpus study of journalistic and text-message French with annotation tasks: the study did not confirm it, and found instead that car tends to be perceived by readers as presenting the information more objectively than parce que (blochowiak-2020). The register difference itself is clear in the treebanks: GSD has 127 car and 40 parce que, ParisStories 0 car and 182 parce que, Rhapsodie 13 and 95 (2026-11-06).

Comme is temporal, causal and comparative: Comme il sortait, il a vu Marie (as, when), Comme il pleut, je reste (since), Fais comme tu veux (as).

Si is "if" (condition, §6), "whether" (indirect question, chapter 26) and "while, whereas" (contrast): Si le tableau est exposé à New York, le modèle […] est resté sur place (fr-ud-dev_00831) "While the painting is on show in New York, the model has stayed where it was".

4. The subjunctive: what it is and where it stands

The subjunctive is the mood of a clause whose content the governing word does not present as a fact: it is willed, ordered, feared, judged, doubted, conceded, or set as a goal or a limit (fraser-1921, §268). It stands almost only in subordinate clauses, after que or a conjunction ending in que; in a main clause it is limited to wishes and orders in the third person (Qu'il entre !, Vive la République !, Soit un triangle ABC). The forms are in the verb chapter.

Two tenses in use. Current French uses the present subjunctive (qu'il vienne) and the perfect subjunctive (qu'il soit venu). The imperfect (qu'il vînt) and pluperfect (qu'il fût venu) belong to literary narrative, mostly in the third person singular. In GSD there are 369 present subjunctives and 10 imperfect ones (Mood=Sub, by Tense, 2026-11-06); the spoken treebanks have no imperfect subjunctive at all.

How frequent it is. In GSD 379 of 24 877 finite verbs (1.5%) are subjunctive; in Sequoia 2.9%, in ParisStories 1.1%, in Rhapsodie 1.4%. The commonest subjunctive lemmas are être, avoir and pouvoir. The subjunctive is rare as a token and frequent as a rule: it is the mood of a closed set of governors, most of them frequent words.

Where the GSD subjunctives stand (the clause relation of the subjunctive verb and its governor or conjunction, 2026-11-06): bien que 43, a que-clause on a noun or adjective (acl) 39, pour que 31, a que-clause as advcl 30, relative clauses 21, avant que 16, coordinated que-clauses 11, afin que 10, craindre 9, falloir 8, sembler 8 (il semble que), sans que 6. Il faut que is fewer than one would expect because il faut takes the infinitive more often than a clause (98 non-finite or non-verbal complements against 8 subjunctive clauses).

The Latin subjunctive covered more ground (purpose, result, indirect questions, indirect discourse) and kept a strict sequence of tenses; its retreat began in late Latin (la chapter 10, §§2, 11).

5. The subjunctive triggers

The triggers fall into groups by meaning; the list is that of the standard grammars (fraser-1921, §§269–271), checked against usage.

Complement clauses (after verbs, impersonals, adjectives and nouns).

meaning	triggers	examples
will, wish, preference	vouloir, souhaiter, désirer, préférer, aimer mieux, tenir à ce que, avoir envie que	Je veux qu'il parte.
order, request, permission, prohibition	ordonner, exiger, demander, permettre, défendre, interdire, empêcher, consentir	Il exige que tout soit prêt.
necessity, possibility, value judgement	il faut, il est nécessaire, il est possible, il se peut, il est important, il vaut mieux, il convient, c'est dommage, il est normal	Il se peut que l'Athenæum et la bibliothèque du Capitole ne fasse qu'un (fr-ud-dev_00710)
emotion	être content, heureux, triste, surpris; regretter, s'étonner, avoir peur, craindre, se réjouir	Je regrette qu'il soit parti.
doubt, denial	douter, nier, contester; il est peu probable; il n'est pas sûr	Je doute qu'il vienne.
belief under negation or question	ne pas croire, ne pas penser, croire ?, penser ?	Je ne pense pas qu'il ait raison.

Adverbial clauses: the conjunctions of purpose, concession, condition (other than si), and time before (§3 table).

fr-ud-train_03249 · UD French GSD Bien qu'elle soit née à New York, Carmen a été élevée à Porto Rico. "Although she was born in New York, Carmen was brought up in Puerto Rico."

fr-ud-train_08043 · UD French GSD À la fin de ce processus, les valeurs négatives sont réordonnées pour que les lignes et colonnes soient croissantes. "At the end of this process the negative values are reordered so that the rows and columns are increasing."

Relative clauses take the subjunctive when the antecedent is sought rather than known (Je cherche un livre qui soit clair), after a superlative or le seul, le premier, le dernier, unique (C'est le meilleur film que j'aie vu), and after a negated or questioned antecedent (Il n'y a personne qui le sache) (fraser-1921, §270). The 21 relative subjunctives of GSD are of these kinds.

What stays indicative.

verbs of saying, believing, knowing, perceiving used positively: dire, affirmer, penser, croire, savoir, voir, être sûr, il est certain, il est évident. In GSD the ccomp of penser and croire are 40 indicative, 6 conditional and 3 subjunctive (2026-11-06);
espérer, which takes the indicative (future): J'espère qu'il viendra, against souhaiter with the subjunctive;
il paraît que (indicative: hearsay), against il semble que (subjunctive, often indicative when the speaker vouches: il me semble que);
the conjunctions of time other than "before", of cause and of result;
après que — indicative in the norm (après qu'il est parti); the subjunctive (après qu'il soit parti), modelled on avant que, is very common in speech and the press and is condemned by the prescriptive grammars.

Belief and its negation. Penser, croire, trouver, être sûr take the indicative when positive, and usually the subjunctive when negated or questioned by inversion — the speaker no longer vouches for the content: Je pense qu'il a raison. / Je ne pense pas qu'il ait raison. / Penses-tu qu'il ait raison ? The indicative after the negation is also possible and keeps the speaker's commitment: Je ne pense pas qu'il a raison (I think he is wrong, and say so).

Mood after bien que in practice. The norm is strict, but usage leaks: Bien que des mutations du gène PTHR1 sont retrouvées chez certains malades, … (fr-ud-train_04549) has an indicative. These are the kind of examples that make a frequency-based parser uncertain about mood.

The same-subject rule. When the subject of the subjunctive clause would be the same as the main subject, an infinitive replaces the clause after most triggers: Je veux partir (*Je veux que je parte), pour partir, avant de partir, sans partir, afin de partir, de peur de partir (fraser-1921, §283). The disjoint-reference requirement (obviation) and the experimental evidence on its weakening are in chapter 23, §6 (feldhausen-2021).

Expletive ne: after verbs of fearing and avant que, à moins que, a careful style adds ne to the subjunctive clause without negating it: Je crains qu'il ne vienne "I'm afraid he will come", avant qu'elle n'arrive (fr-ud-train_06991). See chapter 27, §9.

6. Conditions: si and the other conjunctions

A condition is introduced by si, and the tense of the si clause is fixed by the meaning (fraser-1921, §§274–275):

condition	si clause	main clause	example
open, possible	present	present, future, imperative	Si tu viens, je serai content.
open, general	present or imperfect	present or imperfect	S'il pleut, on reste à la maison.
unlikely or unreal in the present	imperfect	present conditional	Si tu venais, je serais content.
unreal in the past	pluperfect	past conditional	Si tu étais venu, j'aurais été content.
mixed	pluperfect	present conditional	Si j'avais su, je ne serais pas là.

fr-ud-train_03366 · UD French GSD Si l'on abandonnait ce modèle, resterait-il autre chose dans le clergé que des fonctionnaires de Dieu ? if one abandoned this model, would-remain-it other thing in the clergy than some officials of God — "If this model were abandoned, would anything remain in the clergy but God's civil servants?"

Neither the future nor the conditional follows si "if": *si tu viendras, *si tu viendrais. After si "whether" in an indirect question both are normal: Je me demande s'il viendra. Speech breaks the rule with the conditional (% si j'aurais su), the standard does not.

What the treebank shows. The tense pairs of the si advcl and its head in GSD (2026-11-06): present → present 130, present → future 30, imperfect → conditional 11, imperfect → present 7, imperfect → imperfect 5; and 46 with an infinitive or a non-verbal main predicate. The open condition dominates written informative French; the unreal condition belongs to argument and narrative. The present → present pairs include the si of contrast (Si le tableau est exposé à New York, …), which only meaning separates from a condition.

The literary pluperfect subjunctive. In literary French the pluperfect subjunctive can replace either or both halves of an unreal past condition: S'il eût été là, il eût compris = S'il avait été là, il aurait compris. Grammars call this the conditionnel passé deuxième forme.

Conditions without si:

au cas où + conditional: au cas où il viendrait;
à condition que, pourvu que, à moins que + subjunctive;
two conditionals juxtaposed: Il viendrait, je serais content (literary or spoken);
inversion: Viendrait-il, je serais content (literary);
the gerund and the participle: En partant tôt, tu arriveras à l'heure;
que repeated for a second condition, with the subjunctive: Si tu viens et que tu restes, ….

Even if, unless, as if. Même si takes the tenses of si: même s'il pleut, même s'il pleuvait. Comme si takes the imperfect or pluperfect: Il parle comme s'il savait tout. Sauf si "unless" takes the indicative; à moins que "unless" the subjunctive with optional expletive ne.

7. The sequence of tenses

After a main verb in a past tense, a reported present becomes an imperfect, a reported past a pluperfect, and a reported future a conditional (the "future in the past"):

main verb	the content was simultaneous	anterior	posterior
present: Il dit	qu'il est malade	qu'il a été malade	qu'il sera malade
past: Il a dit	qu'il était malade	qu'il avait été malade	qu'il serait malade

A fact still true at the moment of speaking may keep the present: Il m'a dit que la Terre est ronde. The same shifts apply in indirect questions (Il m'a demandé si je venais) and in free indirect speech in narrative.

In the subjunctive the shift in current French is reduced to present vs perfect: Je voulais qu'il vienne (present subjunctive after a past main verb), Je doute qu'il soit venu (anteriority). Literary French keeps the full sequence with the imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive: Je voulais qu'il vînt. The rules of the literary sequence are those of the classical grammars (fraser-1921, §273).

8. Non-finite adverbial clauses

Infinitive clauses. Pour, sans, avant de, afin de, de peur de, au lieu de, après + perfect infinitive replace a clause when the subject is the same as the main subject: Il est parti sans dire au revoir. Avant de partir, il a fermé la porte. Après avoir mangé, il est sorti. In GSD pour + infinitive is the commonest adverbial clause of all (808 advcl with pour, most of them infinitives). The infinitive is advcl with its preposition as mark. The subject of such an infinitive should be the main subject; the rule is broken in speech and in the press (Pour être admis, il faut un dossier, with a generic subject).

The gerund en + present participle has the same subject as the main clause and gives time, manner, means or condition: En sortant, il a vu Marie. Il apprend en lisant. En partant tôt, tu arriveras à l'heure. Tout en stresses simultaneity or concession: Tout en admettant que … (fr-ud-train_04197). In GSD the gerund is an advcl with mark en (342 times).

Participle clauses without en are written French: Étant malade, il est resté chez lui. Arrivé à Paris, il a téléphoné. The present participle is invariable; the past participle agrees with the subject.

Absolute participle clauses have their own subject: Le travail terminé, ils sont partis. Une fois un plat terminé, la suite est apportée immédiatement (fr-ud-train_01647). The participle is advcl of the main verb and the noun its nsubj. They are written French; speech uses une fois que + a finite verb.

9. Parataxis and loose joining

Clauses that are joined without a conjunction and without a dependency are parataxis in UD: an inserted clause (a souligné la même source, parataxis:insert 183 in GSD), a reported-speech frame, a clause after a colon or a dash, a second sentence written with a comma. GSD has 1 116 parataxis, ParisStories only 45 — the spoken treebanks segment their units so that juxtaposed clauses are separate sentences, and use parataxis mostly for inserted frames (je sais pas, tu vois).

10. How Mova handles it

What is done. The parser learns cc, conj, mark, advcl, ccomp from the GSD training trees through en xpos-fill (chapter 20, §12). The tag mapping gives a subjunctive and a conditional the same tag as any finite verb (VBP/VBZ, or VBD for the imperfect): mood is lost in the tags. The treebank keeps it in FEATS, and the parser does not use FEATS.

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

sentence	what Mova gives
Il est venu et il est reparti.	the coordination is right (reparti `conj` of venu, et `cc`, il its own subject), but Il is `nsubj:pass` and est `aux:pass`: the tagger cannot tell the être of a compound tense from the passive être
Il ne boit ni vin ni bière.	right: bière `conj` of vin, each ni `cc`
Il a acheté du pain, et du vin aussi.	right: vin `conj` of pain with `cc` et (du stays one word, `det`)
Bien qu'il soit tard, il travaille.	half right: soit `advcl` of travaille, but qu'il is one token (its `nsubj`) and Bien an `advmod`, so the conjunction bien que is not found
Je partirai quand il arrivera.	half right: quand `mark`, il `nsubj`, but the clause is `ccomp`, not `advcl`
En sortant, il a vu Marie.	right: sortant `advcl` with `mark` En
Il travaille pour que ses enfants puissent étudier.	half right: pour and que are both `mark` of puissent, as in GSD (fr-ud-train_08043), but the clause is `ccomp` of travaille instead of `advcl`
Si tu viens, je serai content.	wrong: tu is the root of the condition and serai an `acl:relcl` of it
S'il venait, je serais content.	wrong: S'il is one token, tagged as a proper name; venait is the root and serais its `conj`
Si j'avais su, je serais venu.	right in shape: venu the root, su `advcl` with `mark` Si (but j'avais is one token, its `aux`)

The written si-clause is not learned reliably: si is also an adverb (si grand) and an answer particle, and the elided s'il is one token. Coordination is learned well when the conjuncts are noun phrases.

What is not done.

Mood and modality. Mova's frames reader (prag/src/frames.rs) marks a clause as not a fact from English words (if, want to, would, the implicatives). For French it would need the mood read from FEATS (Mood=Sub, Mood=Cnd), the governing word classified by the table of §5 (will, fear, doubt, necessity), and si + imperfect read as an unreal condition and si + present as an open one. None of it exists.
The sequence of tenses. In Il a dit qu'il était malade the illness is at the time of saying, not before it. The English reader handles reported speech; the French tense mapping is not written.
Shared dependents. There is no enhanced graph, so the shared subject of Il lit et écrit must be copied from the first conjunct by a rule that does not exist for French.
The conjunction inventory. The compound conjunctions (bien que, alors que, pour que, de sorte que) are learned as mark + fixed where the tokenizer leaves them intact, and lost where an elided qu' is joined to the next word.

11. Sources

Fraser, Squair & Coleman, The New Fraser and Squair Complete French Grammar (1921), §§268–275 (the subjunctive in noun, adjectival, adverbial and principal clauses; tense sequence; conditional sentences), §283 (the infinitive for a subordinate clause): fraser-1921.
Blochowiak, Grisot & Degand, What type of subjectivity lies behind French causal connectives? A corpus-based comparative investigation of car and parce que (Glossa, 2020): blochowiak-2020.
Feldhausen & Buchczyk, Revisiting subjunctive obviation in French (Glossa, 2021): feldhausen-2021.
UD French GSD, Sequoia, ParisStories, Rhapsodie, 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 (xpos_of, explain), en/src/gram.rs, prag/src/frames.rs.
The full list is in Sources.

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🗣️ 24. Coordination and subordination