Word
Les cols que nous avons fait nettoyer sont blancs.
Meaning
The collars that we had cleaned are white.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Les cols que nous avons fait nettoyer sont blancs.
être
to be
nous
we / us (object pronoun)
avoir
to have
faire
to do, to make
Questions & Answers about Les cols que nous avons fait nettoyer sont blancs.
Why doesn't fait agree with Les cols? It comes right after the relative pronoun que.
Normally, a past participle conjugated with avoir agrees with a preceding direct object. However, there is a strict exception for the causative construction: when fait is followed immediately by an infinitive (like nettoyer), it is always invariable. It never takes an -e or an -s.
What is the difference between saying nous avons fait nettoyer and nous avons nettoyé?
The phrase faire nettoyer uses the causative construction (faire + infinitive), which means you caused an action to happen rather than doing it yourself. Nous avons fait nettoyer means "we had [them] cleaned" (for example, at a dry cleaner). If you did the laundry yourself, you would simply say nous avons nettoyé.
What if the sentence used a feminine plural noun, like Les chemises? Would fait change then?
No, it would look exactly the same: Les chemises que nous avons fait nettoyer... Because the fait + infinitive structure is completely invariable, it ignores gender as well as number.
If fait is invariable here, why does the adjective blancs have an -s?