Breakdown of Il travaille au point de s'effondrer.
il
he
travailler
to work
s'effondrer
to collapse
au point de
to the point of
Questions & Answers about Il travaille au point de s'effondrer.
Why is s'effondrer in the infinitive instead of a conjugated verb?
The phrase au point de (to the point of) ends with the preposition de, which must be followed by an infinitive. We use this specific structure because the person doing the working (Il) is the same person experiencing the consequence (collapsing). If the subjects were different, you would use au point que followed by a conjugated verb.
If the verb is in the infinitive, why does it have the pronoun s' in front of it?
Because s'effondrer (to collapse) is a reflexive verb. A rule that is easy to forget is that even when a reflexive verb is in the infinitive, its reflexive pronoun still has to agree with the subject of the sentence. Since the subject is Il, we use se, which contracts to s' before the vowel.
How would this sentence change if I wanted to say "I work to the point of collapsing"?
You would say: Je travaille au point de m'effondrer. Notice that the reflexive pronoun changes to m' to match the new subject Je, while the verb itself stays in the infinitive.
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