Breakdown of En ce qui concerne le développeur, il a failli s'évanouir.
il
he
avoir
to have
le
him, it (masculine direct object pronoun)
en ce qui concerne
regarding
Questions & Answers about En ce qui concerne le développeur, il a failli s'évanouir.
Why do we use the passé composé a failli to translate the word "almost"?
The verb faillir originally means "to fail". When you use it in the passé composé directly followed by an infinitive, it means you "failed" to do that action by a very narrow margin. It is the standard French way to express that an event almost happened but ultimately didn't.
Since s'évanouir is a reflexive verb, shouldn't the passé composé use être instead of avoir?
If you were conjugating s'évanouir in the passé composé, you would indeed use être (as in il s'est évanoui). However, in this sentence, the conjugated verb is faillir, which always uses avoir. The reflexive verb remains in the infinitive, so it does not change the auxiliary of the main verb.
Why does the reflexive pronoun s' go before évanouir and not before the main verb a failli?
In French, when a conjugated verb is followed by an infinitive, object and reflexive pronouns almost always go immediately before the infinitive they belong to. Because the fainting action is what is reflexive here, the s' attaches directly to évanouir.
Is en ce qui concerne a fixed phrase, or can I change the words inside it?