For another example; Why Faire's abbreviation as fait? What causes these abbreviations? I know what makes; H muet, vowel
but Faire ends with "e" not with a consonant. what about that?
These questions can be footling... sorry.
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The same reason when you conjugate to be, you do not say I be, you say I am.– user10191234Commented Oct 11, 2020 at 22:44
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1 Answer
An abbreviation is a truncation of a word, such as the use of inf. to mean infinitive. Fais and ai are conjugations of the verbs faire and avoir, not abbreviations. The infinitive will be the verb form that appears in the dictionary, and it must be conjugated before it is directly applied to a subject. To make an imperfect comparison to English grammar, is and am and were are conjugated forms of (to) be in English, rather than abbreviations.
As implied by the above, je avoir and j'avoir are ungrammatical. Avoir is the infinitive of the verb meaning "to have." The conjugation for the first person present is ai. Because ai begins with a vowel, there is elision (not abbreviation) in je + ai, so we say j'ai.
For a more comprehensive introduction to verbs, please refer to a guide such as Tex's French Grammar.
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"Conjugation" is not an ending or a form but a scheme of forms or the complete set of forms for a given verb. ("The first person form for the present (in the conjugation of avoir) is ai." ) dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/conjugation – en.wiktionary.org/wiki/conjugation– LPHCommented Oct 12, 2020 at 0:07
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@LPH The unqualified "conjugation" of a verb refers to the schema as a whole, but it is clear to me that we can also speak of the individual forms provided that we specify that they are only individual forms. It's not difficult to find phrases like "third person plural conjugation."– MaroonCommented Oct 14, 2020 at 19:41
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There is not a single "third person plural conjugation" in Google books, but you do find a few "first person conjugation" (notice many false positives, the graph is not representative). I suppose that this new usage has not been found sufficiently important to justify a recording in the dictionaries. books.google.com/ngrams/…– LPHCommented Oct 14, 2020 at 20:12