L'Infinitif avec Faire et Laisser (causative)

The causative faire construction is one of the most powerful and characteristic patterns in French syntax. With a single verb (faire) plus an infinitive, French expresses what English needs three different patterns to express: "have someone do something," "make someone do something," and "get something done." Je fais réparer ma voiture covers "I'm having my car repaired." Le professeur fait travailler les élèves covers "The teacher makes the students work." Je le ferai venir covers "I'll have him come over." Once you internalize the construction, you replace clunky English-influenced je demande à quelqu'un de… paraphrases with sleek native syntax.

This page covers the basic construction, the agent-marking rules with à and par, the obligatory pronoun ordering that distinguishes causative faire from ordinary faire sentences, the invariable past participle that violates the usual agreement rule, and the related but distinct construction with laisser (let). By the end, you should be able to produce sentences like Je le lui fais réparer (I'm having him repair it) without hesitation.

The basic construction

The causative pattern is:

faire + infinitive (+ object/agent)

The subject of faire is the causer — the person who arranges, orders, or makes the action happen. The action itself is named by the infinitive. The performer of the action (the causee) is expressed as a noun phrase or pronoun.

The English equivalents — "have," "make," "get done" — vary depending on the volition and agency of the parties. French collapses all of them into a single causative faire.

Word order: infinitive sticks to faire

The cardinal rule of the causative is that the infinitive sits immediately after faire. No object, no agent, no adverb intervenes between faire and the infinitive. This is non-negotiable and is one of the structural features that distinguishes causative faire from ordinary main-verb faire.

The pattern faire entrer (literally "to make enter," idiomatic for "to send in" or "to admit") is one of the most common causative collocations in French — used by receptionists, hosts, judges, and anyone managing entries.

One-actor causative: just an agent

When the infinitive has only one core participant — the agent who performs the action, with no object or thing affected — the agent simply follows faire + infinitive.

In this single-actor pattern, the agent functions like a direct object of faire + infinitive — and indeed, when pronominalized, it takes direct-object pronouns: je le fais venir, il nous fait rire, elle les fait travailler.

Two-actor causative: agent + thing affected

When the infinitive has both an agent (the causee) and a thing affected (the direct object of the embedded verb), the rules shift. The thing affected sits closer to the infinitive, and the agent is marked with à or par.

faire + infinitive + thing-affected + à/par + agent

à vs. par: which to use?

Both prepositions are grammatical with two-actor causatives, but they carry slightly different connotations:

• à is the default. It implies a regular, often interpersonal arrangement: faire lire un livre à son fils (regular parenting), faire faire ses devoirs à un élève (a teacher's normal activity).
• par suggests a more agentive or professional relationship — the causee is doing the action as a job, with their own competence: faire réparer la voiture par le mécanicien, faire construire la maison par un architecte.

In practice, the choice often comes down to register and ambiguity-avoidance. À can be confusing when the embedded verb already takes an indirect object (faire envoyer une lettre à Marie could mean either "have Marie send a letter" or "have someone send a letter to Marie"). In those cases, par disambiguates: faire envoyer une lettre par Marie unambiguously means Marie is the sender.

When ambiguity matters, choose par for the agent.

Pronouns: clitic before faire

When the agent or the thing affected is pronominalized, the pronoun sits before faire, not before the infinitive. This is the key syntactic signature of the causative construction.

Two pronouns: object + agent

When both the thing affected and the agent are pronouns, both sit before faire in the standard French clitic order. The thing affected takes the direct object form (le, la, les); the agent takes the indirect object form (lui, leur) — because once an agent is pronominalized in the two-actor construction, it functions like an indirect object of the whole faire-infinitive unit.

This double-clitic pattern (le lui, le leur) is one of the harder grammatical drills in B1 French. It rewards repetition.

Past participle of faire: invariable

Here is the grammatical surprise that violates one of French's strictest rules: in the causative construction, the past participle fait is invariable. It does not agree with a preceding direct object, even when the direct object is feminine or plural and the rule for the passé composé would normally demand agreement.

In causative faire + infinitive, the past participle fait is always invariable.

This invariability was codified by the 1990 spelling reform, but it has been the recommended usage long before. The reasoning: in the causative, faire is functioning as a kind of light auxiliary, and the "real" verb (the infinitive) is what governs the direct object. Treating faire as a fully agreeing main verb in this construction would obscure the syntactic structure.

The same invariability applies in compound tenses regardless of person, gender, and number of the preceding direct object.

Reflexive causative: se faire + infinitive

When the causer arranges for an action to be performed on themselves, French uses the reflexive causative se faire + infinitive. This is the standard way of saying "to get something done to oneself."

The construction se faire + infinitive is also the standard French equivalent of the English passive "to get + past participle" with negative or accidental events: se faire arrêter (to get arrested), se faire renvoyer (to get fired), se faire avoir (to get conned). It is one of the highest-frequency uses of the causative in everyday speech.

A note on past-participle agreement in se faire: as with the basic causative, fait remains invariable in se faire + infinitive constructions. Elle s'est fait opérer, not elle s'est faite opérer. This is the modern recommendation; older texts may show agreement.

Laisser + infinitive: the permissive cousin

Closely related but semantically distinct from causative faire is the permissive construction with laisser (to let, to allow). The pattern is the same — laisser + infinitive — but the meaning is "let X happen / let X do" rather than "make X happen."

The expression laisse tomber is one of the most common idioms in French — a brush-off equivalent to "drop it," "forget it," or "never mind."

Word order with laisser: more flexible than faire

Unlike the causative faire, which requires the infinitive to sit immediately after, laisser allows two word orders when there is a single agent:

Both are correct and both occur in modern French. The agent-first order (je laisse Pierre partir) is slightly more common in spoken French; the infinitive-first order (je laisse partir Pierre) is more common in writing.

Past participle of laisser: now invariable (1990 reform)

Historically, the past participle of laisser in this construction agreed with a preceding direct object when the embedded infinitive was transitive — a notoriously fiddly rule. The 1990 spelling reform standardized laissé as invariable, in line with causative faire.

Both forms occur in modern texts. The 1990 reform is increasingly the standard in academic and journalistic writing; older speakers and traditionalist writers may still apply the agreement rule. Either is defensible; the invariable form is what we recommend.

Permettre + à + de + infinitive: a different syntax

A common confusion: while laisser takes a direct construction (laisser quelqu'un partir), the verb permettre (to allow) takes a different syntactic template: permettre à quelqu'un de + infinitive.

The two structures express overlapping meanings but with different registers and syntactic templates:

• laisser quelqu'un + infinitive (direct, more colloquial)
• permettre à quelqu'un de + infinitive (with both à and de, more formal)

In casual speech, laisser is preferred; in formal writing or polite request, permettre is the natural choice. Mixing them up — je permets Marie de partir or je laisse à Marie partir — produces ungrammatical sentences.

Useful causative collocations

A handful of fixed faire + infinitive collocations are so common they function almost as single verbs. Learning these saves you from constructing them from scratch.

These collocations are the backbone of conversational French. Je te ferai savoir, fais-moi rire, ne me fais pas attendre, tu m'as fait peur — sentences you will say or hear daily.

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Splitting faire and the infinitive with an object or agent.

Mistake 2: Putting the pronoun before the infinitive instead of before faire.

Mistake 3: Agreeing the past participle of faire in the causative.

Mistake 4: Using permettre without the à + person + de + infinitive template.

Mistake 5: Using faire + que-clause where causative faire + infinitive belongs.

Mistake 6: Confusing à and par when both could work.

Key takeaways

• Causative faire
  • infinitive
  lets the subject of faire arrange or cause the action named by the infinitive. It covers English "have someone do," "make someone do," and "get something done."
• The infinitive sits immediately after faire — nothing can intervene.
• One actor (the agent): faire + infinitive + agent (je fais venir Pierre).
• Two actors (agent + thing affected): faire + infinitive + thing + à/par + agent (je fais réparer ma voiture par Pierre).
• Object pronouns sit before faire, not before the infinitive (je le fais venir, je le lui fais réparer).
• The past participle fait in the causative is invariable, even with a preceding feminine or plural direct object: la voiture que j'ai fait réparer.
• Reflexive se faire
  • infinitive is the standard form for getting something done to oneself: se faire couper les cheveux, se faire opérer, se faire voler.
• Laisser
  • infinitive is the permissive cousin (let / allow). Word order is more flexible (je laisse Pierre partir / je laisse partir Pierre). Past participle is now invariable in modern recommended usage.
• Permettre à quelqu'un de
  • infinitive is the more formal alternative — distinct syntactic template, more polite register.