gouverné

Gouverné is the past participle of the French verb gouverner and is used primarily as an adjective or in compound tenses. It describes something that is under the control, administration, or authority of a government or ruler. In political language, one speaks of a territoire gouverné, a population gouvernée, or a regime gouverné by a particular authority to indicate that governance and decision-making are exercised by that authority.

As a noun in rare uses, the form gouverné can appear in phrases like les gouvernés to denote the people or subjects who are under a given government, typically contrasted with les gouvernants, the rulers or those who govern. This pair is common in political analysis, historical writing, and discussions of power relations.

In linguistic terminology, gouverné belongs to the traditional concept of government (gouvernement). In this sense, it designates the element that is governed by another word, the gouvernant. The governing word imposes a syntactic requirement, such as a preposition or case marking, on the governed element. For example, in a sentence like parler à Marie, the noun phrase Marie is the governed element under the governing preposition à, which is in turn linked to the governing verb penser or parler. The gouverné thus refers to the dependent piece in the government relation.

Etymologically, gouverné derives from gouverner, which comes from Old French gouverner, from Latin gubernare, ultimately traceable to Greek kybernan, meaning to steer or direct. The term appears in literature and grammar discussions to describe relationships of control, authority, or syntactic dependency.