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Placing words like ’rien’ in French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Spiderkat Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5812 days ago 175 posts - 248 votes  Speaks: French*, English Studies: Russian | Message 9 of 23 14 July 2011 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Not really. Beaucoup is an adverb but can be used as a pronoun. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Haldor Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5615 days ago 103 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish Studies: French, Spanish | Message 10 of 23 15 July 2011 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Exactly! If I say, j'ai beaucoup dit, it means that I've said 'a lot'! Is 'a lot' an adjective? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Mikael84 Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Peru Joined 5300 days ago 76 posts - 116 votes Speaks: French*, Finnish*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Russian | Message 11 of 23 23 July 2011 at 8:25am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
FYI, on a side note, "j'ai beaucoup dit" doesn't really sound right to me, you would say instead "j'ai beaucoup parlé". 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| JLA Triglot Newbie France Joined 4897 days ago 25 posts - 33 votes Speaks: French*, English, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 12 of 23 23 July 2011 at 10:26am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I have to agree, as a French native speaker, "j'ai beaucoup dit" sounds strange to my ears even though I couldn't say why. Following sentences work:
- J'ai tout dit (I said everything) - J'ai presque tout dit (I said almost everything) - J'en ait dit beaucoup (I cannot really give a grammatical explanation, but the verb "dire" seems to almost imply a full content and adding "en" behind je make it works better in this example, making it express the following: "I have said a lot of it". A sidenote, if you add a complement to the verb "dire" then everything start to work again: Je l'ai beaucoup dit Je l'ai souvent dit So yes, the "perceptual" rule for me would be: you can add an adverb to dire, provided you also supply a direct object Edited by JLA on 23 July 2011 at 2:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Haldor Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5615 days ago 103 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish Studies: French, Spanish | Message 13 of 23 23 July 2011 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Thanks to 'tout le monde' for your replies, which have helped me in my process of learning French. What about de/du/de la?
Not in general, but don't the French say '(rien) du tout', 'c'est du bien'. But at the same time, I've read 'troupe d'élite'.. When is it 'du' and when is it 'de' in these cases? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| JLA Triglot Newbie France Joined 4897 days ago 25 posts - 33 votes Speaks: French*, English, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 14 of 23 23 July 2011 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In the case of "d'élite" it's simply due to the fact that the following letter is a vowel.
Here are some examples: Un peu de pain (you would have "le pain") Un peu de chance (you would have "la chance") Un peu d'amour (you would have "l'amour") Un peu d'air (you would have "l'air") Also careful: Un peu d'humour (you would have "l'humour" since in French, "h" is mostly silent) So basically, it follows the same rules as the definite article ("élite" being "l'élite") for your examples: "le tout" => "du tout" (contraction for "de le tout") "le bien" => "du bien" (contraction for "de le bien") "l'élite" => "d'élite" (contraction for "de l'élite") To be on the safe side here: You would NEVER EVER use the expanded forms, I just write them here to explain how it works :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 15 of 23 24 July 2011 at 12:48am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I think this comes down to the nature of adverbs. I'll use examples in English. 1. Adverbs can be used alone to qualify a verb. EG. I did it willingly. 2. Adverbs can also precede an adjective. EG. They are happily married. 3. Adverbs can introduce a noun-phrase. EG. I have plenty of money. 3b. By extension, an adverb can be used pronominally (when the meaning of the missing noun-phrase is clear) -> I have plenty. These all hold for French in a similar way to English. J'ai beaucoup parlé is case 1 -- the adverb directly qualifies the verb. J'ai dit beaucoup would be case 3b -- dire is always transitive; ie it needs an object/complement), so beaucoup has to act pronominally. The original poster's confusion here is understandable: French object pronouns come before the verb, don't they? Yes, but only weak pronouns, clitics that never take stress. "Beaucoup" takes stress -- it's pronounced clearly, so it goes in the same slot in the word order as a noun would. I hope that helps. Edited by Cainntear on 24 July 2011 at 12:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 16 of 23 24 July 2011 at 12:52am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It's an "adverbial", but in this case it's being used "pronominally", because in this case it means "a lot of stuff", and it's taking the place of the direct object. Very few serious grammars would call it "a pronoun", because the number of words that can be used "pronominally" is quite high, and tend to follow different rules from true pronouns. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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