Why do we use the past participle "occupés" after "semblaient" in the third sentence. Why isn't it in the infinitive "occuper"?
Past participle following imparfait
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Rebekah O.Kwiziq community member
Past participle following imparfait
This question relates to:French writing exercise "A day in the countryside"
Asked 3 years ago
Hi Rebekah,
Just to add to Maarten’s answer, here, ‘occupés’ (busy) is an attribute adjective which refers to the verb of state ‘sembler’ (rather than two verbs following each other).
It could have been -
Ils semblaient impatients =They seemed impatient
Ils semblaient heureux = They seemed happy
Here is a link to the Kwiziq list ( not exhaustive) of verbs of state -
https://kwiziq.learnfrenchwithalexa.com/learn/theme/1512981
Hope this helps!
Maarten K. Kwiziq Q&A super contributor
This is past participle as adjective - “the ants seemed (to be) busy carrying etc”Try another adjective that isn’t a past participle in place of “busy” to check - eg “the ants seemed (to be) slow carrying . . .”
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