I’ve been doing every combination to find some holes in these rules for pronoun word order. I thought I found it with these sentence examples:
I sent him to you. (Je te le ai envoyé)
I sent you to him. (Je te lui ai envoyé)
Well… they make sense and the rules aren’t broken. Darn. Howeverrrr, I finally found something that my advanced grammar books failed to explicitly explain. Vous, te, nous… These pronouns are indirect and direct so they must have their own set of rules for their position.
I sent us to you = Je nous te ai envoyé …??
I sent you to us = Je te nous ai envoyé …??
It’s my hunch that it follows the English word order. Direct object, then indirect object. Google translation gave the opposite. Who wins?
I have looked through this book which has everything (written for young Etonians of the 19th century DO YOU HAVE DIS BOOK WHITEOCTAVE mwaha) that could possibly be said about french grammar, and I should hazard to say that the best way would indeed be to use á + disjunctive pronoun. I doubt that it be possible to say te nous etc. By my instinct this is not right, however there may be instances where this is used, but I have never read such a succession of pronouns before. Interesting question though!
For Etonians, huh? Then it must be hard to obtain this book unless I live in England. Well, I think you’re pretty much right on with this, but I wanted to see if it was possible to make such constructions and still be understood.
It appears that, according to Hawkins and Towell’s French Grammar and Usage, that there are some restrictions on possible combinations. To whit:
(a) No pronoun from the first column (me, te…) can appear with one from the third (lui, leur). The preposition a (with the grave accent) is generally used here.
(b) No pronouns from the same column can appear together. So Richard s’est joint a notre petit groupe can only become Richard s’est joint a nous, not Il se nous est joint nor Il nous s’est joint.
Excellent! I only thought of the issue of mixing pronouns in the same column. I didn’t realize you can’t mix the 1st and third column. One of my first examples was wrong after all! “I sent you to him. (Je te lui ai envoyé)”. Ah, the joys and embarassment of grammar hacking…
I usually check out my main three French grammar books at the same time because I know one of them will have something that the other two doesn’t, but I didn’t check out Hawkins this time.
Here is the other two that I read:
A Reference Grammar of Modern French by Anne Judge
Advanced French Grammar by Monique L’Huillier
I have this book and think it rocks. It’s one of the best French grammar books written in English.
The other French grammar book I like is Le Bon Usage (Maurice Grevisse). It is written entirely in French, and comes in a thick heavy hardcover version that you can use to thunk someone with in self defense…
I’m glad I ‘m not the only one that thought that construction was ok. However, Turpissimus quoted Hawkins’ grammar and it is incorrect.
From Turpissimus’s post:
(a) No pronoun from the first column (me, te…) can appear with one from the third (lui, leur). The preposition a (with the grave accent) is generally used here.
What’s been said above is pretty correct. Indeed, i agree with Mariek, and the best French grammar we have is Grevisse’s but it’s Belgian… i’m not making fun of it at all, it’s the only one i use, but there are slight differences between french and belgian grammar though (esp. in the terminology, but it’s not the issue here). The problem whit pronouns is that in Grevisse’s grammar it’s 50 pages of rules… I dont think i’ll be able to write them all into english here, but i’ll explain the basic ones from the examples u gave… but it’s very tricky even to us, it’s hell to teach to kids, we’ve got this facility that we know when it sounds good or odd, so it’s fine as long as u dont start thinking too much I’ll give u in brakets, the paragraphs references to Grevisse’s grammar
I’ll start with the translations of the sentences u wrote for there are some mistakes in it, but still understandable though, just sounds odd (btw, never trust google’s translator nor any other, they all suck!) - and i’ll comment them.
I sent him to you > Je te l’ai envoyé.
Indeed we must suppress the vowel on the pronoun when it comes before another vowel so to avoid hiatus (§635b). Yet, u used the right pronoun “le” for the object complement is direct (indirect would have been “lui”).
For the personal pronouns we make a distinction between (common to all indo-european languages, so same as in greek and latin…) (board §634) :
direct object complement pronouns (called COD, Complément d’Objet Direct) which follows the verb directly without the use of a preposition (à, de, pour…) : me, te, le/la, nous, vous, les ;
Ex. - Le garçon me voit (the boy sees me) ;
Le garçon te voit (the boy sees you) ;
Le garçon le voit (the boy sees him) ;
Le garçon la voit (the boy sees her) ;
Je vois le garçon (i see the boy) > je le vois (i see him) ;
Je vois la fille (i see the girl) > je la vois (i see her) ;
Je vois le garçon et la fille (i see the boy & the girl) > je les vois (i see them)
Same for all the persons… tu, nous, vous and ils…
indirect object complement pronouns (called COI, Complément d’Objet Indirect) which follows the verb after a preposition (hence ‘indirect’) : me, te, lui, nous, vous, leur ;
Ex. - Le garçon me parle (the boy talks to me) : indirect because of the preposition ; the “regular” form of the sentence would have been “le garçon parle à moi”, which is perfectly incorrect in french
Le garçon te parle (the boy talks to you)
Le garçon lui parle (the boy talks to him/her, no difference here between masculin and feminin ! Yippee!!! )
Nous vous parlons (we talk to you) ;
Vous nous parlez (you talk to us) ;
Je leur parle (I talk to them)
reflexive pronoun (pronoms réfléchis) when the action is done on the subject : me, te, se, nous, vous, se.
Ex. - Je me lave (I wash myself) it’s odd in English but we must say the reflexive pronoun or the sentence is incomplete ;
Tu te laves (you wash yourself) ;
Il/elle se lave (he/she washes him/herself) ;
Nous nous lavons …
Vous vous lavez …
Ils se lavent …
\
I sent you to him > Je l’ai envoyé à toi or better je l’ai envoyé vers toi.
He sent us to you > Il nous a envoyé à/vers toi (‘I sent us to u’ sounds odd to me, so i changed for “he”, but it’s all the same, change “Il” for “je” and correct the verb to “ai envoyé” and u’re done )
He sent you to us > Il t’a envoyé à/vers nous (same change here)
Those 3 sentences fall under the same rule since u need to be using a preposition in french (§638). When using a preposition, we do not use the indirect pronon as previously (which is a “united form” - forme conjointe) but the “separated form” - forme disjointe - see second example (moi, toi, lui/elle/soi).
There are a few rules which must be known :
a) Some combinations are forbiden, esp. with all pronominal verbs. It’s impossible to find me, te, se, nous and vous pronouns aside in a sentence, neither with lui and leur (§657). We must then use the separate form of the pronoun.
Ex. - instead of *“Tu me lui présenteras” we have to say “Tu me présentera à lui”
b) It’s not allowed with the following verbs “avoir affaire à” (deal with s.o.), “croire” (trust/believe), “en appeler à” (call on), “habituer” (get used to), “penser” (think), “prendre garde” (take care), “recourir” (appeal to), “renoncer” (give up), “rêver” (dream), “songer” (think about), “aller” (go), “courir” (run), “venir” (come), which need the preposition “à” or “vers” (because they express a mouvement).
I think i’ve been far too long and i must be boring u
The problem is that those rules are quite complex as u can see, it’s easy for us because we can hear if a form is correct or not, but to foreign people who have the courage to learn french it must be dreadfull…
Good luck
Please, no apology is necessary. Your explanation was most helpful, thank you.
But I remain confounded by the sentence “I sent you to him. (Je te lui ai envoyé)”. As I said to 1%homeless, it seems right to me. However, I readily defer to your judgment and nationality!
I based my claim on the discussion in L’Huillier’s “Advanced French Grammar” (page 506, et seq.). Her discussion seems similar to the stuff that turps quoted. In fine, she gives the example:
Je le lui ai envoyé hier (I sent it to him/her yesterday.)
She notes that ‘le’ is the direct object , ‘lui’ indirect. So, why can’t we substitute ‘te’ for ‘le’, e.g.,
Je te lui ai envoyé hier (I sent you to him/her yesterday.) ?
This substitution doesn’t seem to violate any of the rules concerning placement of tonic (disjoint) or clitic (joint) pronouns.
Ooops! Got it. I found in L’Huillier the analogue to the ‘1st and 3rd column rule’:
"..when the direct object of the verb is one of the pronouns, me, te, nous, or vous or one of the reflexive prononuns me, te, se, nous, or vous, then a\ + tonic pronoun must be used for the indirect object (and not one of the clitic indirect object prononuns).
U dont have to, u know there are ppl here who will speak a dreadfull french, so being french is not a guaranty of quality, trust me… my pupil’s french is dreadfull, they make mistake no foreign learner would ever do
I told u it’s tricky and evil …
As i stated before, there are some pronouns combinations which are not allowed. The forbiden combinations are the following :
a) 1st person pronoun : me+me ; me+te ; me+se ; me+nous ; me+vous ; me+lui ; me+leur
b) 2nd person pronoun : te+me ; te+te ; te+se ; te+nous ; te+vous ; te+lui ; te+leur
c) 3rd person pronoun reflexive : se+me ; se+te ; se+se ; se+ nous ; se+vous ; se+lui ; se+leur
d) 4th person pronoun (ie. 1st pl) : nous+me ; nous+te ; nous+se ; nous+nous (Attention the first “nous” is not subject as “nous nous verrons”, i’m talking of object pronouns) ; nous+vous (id.) ; nous+lui ; nous+leur
e) 5th person pronoun (ie. 2nd pl.) : vous+me (same as before - it works if “vous” is subject and not object) ; vous + te ; vous+se ; vous+nous ; vous+vous ; vous+lui ; vous+leur
As u see, all pronouns are present BUT third person pronoun “LE” as stated in the grammar u use. Hence we can say :
je te le donne (i give it to you)
but we cant say
°_je te lui ai envoyé hier_, we’ll have to say, since there’s a forbiden combination (‘te+lui’) : je t’ai envoyé vers lui hier.
You can add the verb “envoyer” to the list stated in b) of my previous post. Actually i think u can add to the list all movement verbs as long as there’s an aim or a direction ; that’s also why we’d use “vers” and not “à”. before the tonic pronoun (thanks for the word i didnt know it in English we scarcely call them this way here). The difference in the use of “vers” and “à” is more or less the same as in Greek the use of “accusative” to show the direction/movement and “dative” for ‘immobility’
..when the direct object of the verb is one of the pronouns, me, te, nous, or vous or one of the reflexive prononuns me, te, se, nous, or vous, then a\ + tonic pronoun must be used for the indirect object (and not one of the clitic indirect object prononuns).
I don’t know how I missed that, but I think that is why it’s best to have three grammar books. Hawkins’ explanation isn’t lost in verbose.
Really u shouldnt, i find it a lot easier than Latin… Of course i wont tell u it’s easy… we do have some tricky rules as the ones on pronouns and verbs but i remember when learning english the difficulties i faced in using correctly the tenses and modals… and dont succeed always yet
So take heart… u’ll get thru with it !
But French is not currently in my plans. The last time I remember seriously studying french was like… 8 years ago, and then I couldn’t continue because I didn’t have enough resources to try and study alone.
Oops, I forgot about the elision …again
Then it must be hard to obtain this book unless I live in England. Well, I think you’re pretty much right on with this, but I wanted to see if it was possible to make such constructions and still be understood.
I only thought of the issue of mixing pronouns in the same column. I didn’t realize you can’t mix the 1st and third column. One of my first examples was wrong after all! “I sent you to him. (Je te lui ai envoyé)”. Ah, the joys and embarassment of grammar hacking…
I dont think i’ll be able to write them all into english here, but i’ll explain the basic ones from the examples u gave… but it’s very tricky even to us, it’s hell to teach to kids, we’ve got this facility that we know when it sounds good or odd, so it’s fine as long as u dont start thinking too much 