Les verbes de perception suivis de l'infinitif

When you witness someone or something doing an action, French wraps the whole event in a tight, infinitive-based structure: je vois Marie traverser la rue (I see Marie cross the street / I see Marie crossing the street). The perceived subject becomes the direct object of the perception verb, and the action they perform is expressed as an infinitive — no que, no participle, no progressive marker. This is the French equivalent of English constructions like I saw him leave and I heard her singing, but it covers both at once: French uses a single infinitive form where English splits between the bare infinitive and the -ing gerund.

This page covers the five core verbs of perception (voir, entendre, sentir, regarder, écouter), the syntactic structure they share, the position of pronouns, the choice between this construction and a relative clause with qui, and the comparison with English and Spanish equivalents.

The five core verbs

A note on the voir / regarder and entendre / écouter pairs: French distinguishes passive perception (something reaches your senses) from active perception (you direct your attention toward it). Je vois = "I see" (it happens to be in my visual field); je regarde = "I watch" (I am focusing on it). Same split as in Italian (vedere / guardare) and Spanish (ver / mirar). English collapses both into "see" and "look at," with "watch" as a third option.

The structure: subject + perception verb + perceived noun + infinitive

The full pattern is:

[subject] + [perception verb] + [perceived noun phrase] + [infinitive] + [optional complements]

The perceived noun is the direct object of the perception verb — it is what you are seeing, hearing, or feeling. The infinitive expresses what that noun is doing. There is no preposition, no que, no relative pronoun: the infinitive sits naked next to its subject.

The construction is called proposition infinitive in French grammar. The infinitive carries its own subject (the perceived noun), even though there is no conjugated verb attached to that subject. This is the only construction in standard French where an infinitive has an overt subject — every other infinitive use shares its subject with the main clause.

English vs French: bare infinitive, -ing, or both?

English has two perception constructions where French has one:

• Bare infinitive: I saw him leave. — focuses on the completed event.
• -ing form: I saw him leaving. — focuses on the action in progress.

French uses the infinitive for both readings. Context disambiguates:

If you want to specifically emphasise the in-progress aspect, French has alternatives:

• A relative clause with qui: J'ai vu Marie qui partait (I saw Marie [who was] leaving) — the imparfait inside the relative clause forces the in-progress reading.
• The periphrasis en train de: Je l'ai vu en train de manger (I saw him in the middle of eating).

But the basic infinitive construction is the unmarked, default form, and it covers both English readings without ambiguity in most contexts.

Pronouns: the perceived noun becomes a direct object pronoun

When the perceived noun is replaced by a pronoun, it becomes a direct object pronoun (me, te, le, la, nous, vous, les) and moves to its standard pre-verbal position — before the perception verb, not before the infinitive.

This is a contrast worth flagging: in modal-plus-infinitive constructions like je veux le voir, the pronoun attaches to the infinitive. But in perception-plus-infinitive constructions, the pronoun attaches to the perception verb. The difference is that in je le vois travailler, le is the direct object of vois (it is the person I am seeing), not of travailler. The pronoun goes to the verb whose argument it is.

If the perceived person is doing something to a second object, that second object becomes a pronoun attached to the infinitive (its semantic governor):

Past participle agreement

In compound tenses (passé composé, plus-que-parfait, etc.), the past participle of the perception verb agrees with the preceding direct object when one is present:

This is the standard avoir + past participle agreement rule: the participle agrees with a preceding direct object. When the direct object follows the verb (as in the simple cases above), there is no agreement: j'ai vu Marie partir (no agreement, because Marie follows vu).

Compared to a relative clause with QUI

There is a near-synonymous construction: a relative clause introduced by qui. Both can translate "I see her singing":

• Je la vois chanter. (perception + infinitive)
• Je la vois qui chante. (perception + relative clause with qui)

The relative-clause version is slightly more dynamic — it underscores that the action is unfolding before your eyes. It is also useful when the embedded clause has its own complement structure that would clutter the infinitive form. Both are correct, both are common.

For literary or descriptive contexts, the qui version often sounds more natural, especially when the action involves a clearly imperfective, ongoing event.

Faire-causative: a related but distinct construction

The pattern looks superficially similar to the causative faire, but the semantics are reversed: with faire, you are not perceiving an action — you are causing it.

• Je vois venir le médecin. — I see the doctor come / coming.
• Je fais venir le médecin. — I have the doctor come (I summon him).

In the causative, the embedded subject (le médecin) is something more like an indirect object — French treats it differently for pronoun placement and agreement. See Causative faire and Infinitive with Causative faire for the full treatment.

What matters here: do not confuse the two constructions. Voir venir le médecin describes a perception; faire venir le médecin describes a cause-effect relationship.

Comparison with Spanish and Italian

Romance languages mostly converge on this construction, with minor variations:

The Romance pattern is essentially uniform; the only thing that changes language to language is the verb form and the surface order of pronouns. English is the outlier with its post-verbal pronoun and its dual bare-infinitive / -ing system.

Idiomatic uses

Several common French idioms are built on this perception-plus-infinitive frame:

The verb sentir in particular has expanded into a metaphorical sense: je sens que ça va mal finir (I have a feeling it will end badly), je le sens venir (I can feel it coming).

Sample dialogue

Common Mistakes

Mistake 1: Using que + subjunctive after a perception verb.

The je vois que... pattern is fine if you mean "I notice that..." or "I realise that..." — but it is a different construction expressing inference, not direct perception.

Mistake 2: Using an -ing form (gerondif) instead of the infinitive.

The gérondif (e.g. en venant) has its own uses (concurrent action, manner) but cannot serve as the action perceived.

Mistake 3: Putting the pronoun before the infinitive instead of before the perception verb.

Mistake 4: Inserting qui without realising it changes the structure.

Mistake 5: Forgetting agreement of the past participle with a preceding direct object.

Mistake 6: Confusing voir with regarder, entendre with écouter.

The mismatch between active (écouter, regarder) and passive (entendre, voir) is more rigorously enforced in French than in English.

Key takeaways

Three points to internalize:

1. Perception + perceived noun + infinitive is the default French frame. Je vois Marie traverser la rue. No que, no participle, no progressive marker. The infinitive carries its own subject (Marie).

2. The pronoun attaches to the perception verb, not the infinitive — because the perceived person is the direct object of seeing/hearing. Je la vois traverser la rue, not je vois la traverser.

3. French covers both English readings with one form. Je l'ai vu partir means both "I saw him leave" (perfective) and "I saw him leaving" (imperfective). Use a relative clause with qui (je l'ai vu qui partait) if you specifically need to highlight the ongoing nature of the action.