Position des Pronoms Clitiques: récapitulatif

This page is the map of every clitic position in French. Once you know where the pronoun goes in each sentence type, the rest of the system — agreement, register, special cases — falls into place. The vast majority of B1 errors with object pronouns are not about which form to use, but about where to put it.

The core idea you need first: French object pronouns are clitics. They are unstressed, they cannot stand alone, and they form a phonological unit with a specific host verb. In every sentence, the question is: which verb do they cliticize onto, and on which side? Five of the six cases below put them before that host; only one — the affirmative imperative — puts them after.

The default rule: BEFORE the verb

In every declarative, interrogative, and negative sentence with a single finite verb, all clitic pronouns sit immediately before the verb. Nothing comes between the pronoun and its verb except other clitics, ne, and (in some imperatives) the negative particles.

In inverted questions, the pronoun stays glued to the verb (le voyez-vous), not to the inverted subject. The pronoun is the verb's prefix; the subject is a separate phonological unit.

In negation, the order is subject — ne — pronoun(s) — verb — pas. The clitic stays inside the ne...pas shell, attached to the verb.

With an infinitive: BEFORE the infinitive

When you have a modal, aspectual, or causative construction (pouvoir, vouloir, devoir, aller, venir de, faire, laisser, aimer, préférer, espérer...) plus an infinitive, the pronoun attaches to the infinitive, not to the conjugated verb. This is the most common B1 mistake — English speakers want to put the pronoun before the modal, as in "I want to see her" → Je veux *la voir, not je **la veux voir*.

The rule is logical once you internalize it: the pronoun goes with the verb whose action it actually relates to. In je veux la voir, la is the object of voir, not of vouloir — so it sits before voir.

There is one exception, partially: with faire causative and a few perception verbs (laisser, voir, entendre, sentir), the pronoun attaches to the conjugated verb instead — see the special-cases section below.

In compound tenses: BEFORE the auxiliary

In compound tenses (passé composé, plus-que-parfait, futur antérieur, conditionnel passé, subjonctif passé), the pronoun sits before the auxiliary (avoir or être), not before the past participle.

The same goes for negation: Je ne l'ai pas vu — the pronoun is between ne and ai, not between avoir and the participle.

When the preceding direct object is feminine or plural, the past participle agrees with it: Marie ? Je l'ai vu*e hier (-e because *l' = la). This agreement is one of the most-tested points on French dictation exercises.

In the affirmative imperative: AFTER the verb (with hyphens)

The affirmative imperative is the only place where French object pronouns sit after the verb. They are connected by hyphens, and the first-person and second-person forms switch to their stressed equivalents moi and toi.

The me → moi and te → toi switch only happens at the end of the pronoun string. If another pronoun follows, me and te keep their clitic form: Donne-*le-moi (give it to me), Dis-**le-moi* (tell me).

The pronoun en and y stay in their normal form, but they trigger a euphonic -s on second-person singular -er imperatives: Vas-y ! (Go!), Manges-en ! (Eat some!) — the -s is purely phonological, to avoid the awkward /va.i/ or /mã.ʒã/. Without en/y, you write va and mange with no s.

In the negative imperative: BEFORE the verb (back to the default)

As soon as you negate the imperative, the pronoun returns to its normal preverbal position, and moi/toi go back to me/te.

The asymmetry between affirmative and negative imperative trips up almost every learner. A useful way to think about it: the affirmative imperative is the only "rebel" structure; everything else (declarative, interrogative, negative — including the negative imperative) keeps the pronoun in its default preverbal slot.

In the gérondif: between en and the verb

The gérondif is en + present participle (en parlant, en marchant, en mangeant). Object pronouns sit between en and the participle.

This is the only construction where a pronoun sits between two non-verb words. Treat en + pronoun + participle as a fused block.

Multiple pronouns: the order

When two or more pronouns appear together before the verb, they follow a fixed order. There is no flexibility: the order is determined by the person and type of each pronoun.

Declarative / interrogative / negative / infinitive / compound tense

The mnemonic: first/second person before third person, then y before en.

A constraint that catches learners off guard: French does not allow two third-person clitics from columns 1 and 3 together. You cannot say me lui, te lui, nous leur, vous leur. When you need to combine "to me" + "to him," one of them — almost always the indirect — must shift to a disjunctive: Il m'a présenté à lui (He introduced me to him), not *il me lui a présenté.

Affirmative imperative

The order changes when the pronouns follow the verb. The new order is: direct object — indirect object — y — en.

The moi/toi → m'/t' contraction happens only before en: donne-m'en (give me some), va-t'en (go away).

Special cases: faire causative, laisser, voir, entendre

These verbs take an infinitive but behave differently from the modal/aspectual verbs above. The pronouns attach to the conjugated verb (the perception or causative verb), not to the infinitive.

Faire + infinitif (causative)

Faire + infinitive means "to have something done" or "to make someone do something." The clitic always sits before faire, regardless of whose action it represents.

The construction is fused — faire + infinitif acts as a single complex predicate, and the pronoun cliticizes onto its left edge.

Laisser + infinitif

Laisser + infinitive ("to let / allow X to do") allows the same fused behavior, especially in modern usage.

In more formal or literary French, you may also see the pronoun before the infinitive (je laisse le partir), but the modern preference is to fuse with laisser.

Voir, entendre, sentir, regarder, écouter + infinitif

Perception verbs behave like faire/laisser: pronouns attach to the conjugated perception verb.

When the infinitive itself has a separate pronoun object, both pronouns end up before the perception verb: Je le lui ai vu donner (I saw him give it to her) — but this construction is rare and almost confined to formal writing. In speech, native speakers will usually rephrase.

Summary table

Common Mistakes

These are the highest-frequency position errors English speakers make at A2–B1 level.

The English habit of placing the object after the verb (see it, call her) transfers wrong into French. Whenever you have modal + infinitive, the pronoun belongs before the infinitive, not after it.

Some learners overcorrect and slap the pronoun before vouloir itself. But le is the object of voir, so it must sit next to voir. Modal verbs in French are not "transparent" the way they are in English — vouloir doesn't share its object slot.

In affirmative imperatives, me and te become moi and toi — but only when they sit at the end of the pronoun string. Memorize the full forms: donne-le-moi, dis-le-moi, donne-la-moi, donne-les-leur.

The fixed order in compound-tense negation is: ne + pronoun + auxiliary + pas + participle. The pronoun sits between ne and the auxiliary, never between the auxiliary and the participle.

The affirmative imperative is the only sentence type where the pronoun sits after the verb. As soon as you negate it, you return to the default: ne + pronoun + verb + pas. This switch is the single most asymmetric rule in the French clitic system.

For the more granular rules — multi-clitic ordering with imperatives, the me/te ↔ moi/toi switch, and the rare formal je le veux voir — see the dedicated chapters: pronouns/multiple-clitics/order, pronouns/multiple-clitics/order-imperative, and pronouns/multiple-clitics/with-modal-verbs.