Talk:French pronouns

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Added section on relative pronouns. I put it above the section on demonstrative pronouns because it mentioned relative clauses, and I felt that someone should know about them before they use them with demonstrative pronouns. Also, I think the the grammar I used in my examples are incorrect. Feel free to correct/edit it if you want. --Kurotsyn 04:58, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Qui est-ce qui

I have added a line explaining qu'est-ce que is a single compound, based on "Acquiring optionality in french wh-questions: an experimental study" by Shalom Zuckerman & Aafke Hulk. Small children use it without knowing it consists of que and est-ce que. Although they don't mention qu'est-ce qui, I'm sure it is also a compound. Now I want to confirm the following things to improve the article.

1. I think qui est-ce que is not a compound but a construction of an interrogative and est-ce que to avoid inversion, just like où est-ce que and quand est-ce que. If so, children don't use it as often as qu'est-ce que. Am I right?
2. I have no idea whether qui est-ce qui is a compound or a construction. Is there any source that classifies it to either of them? And qui est-ce qui can always be replaced by qui, am I right?

- TAKASUGI Shinji 10:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure you can find sources that treat each as a single compound and sources that treat each as a construction … as for experimental studies, though, I don't know.

Yes, qui est-ce qui can always be replaced by qui.

—Ruakh_TALK 13:13, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

There is no syntactic motivation for treating qu'est-ce que and qui est-ce que as compound forms; it is of course simpler from a pedagogical point of view, and obviously there is some grammaticalization going on. But this is just the structure you would expect if you start with C'est X que Y and make a question about the identity of X (it becomes a wh-form, and the subject clitic ce is inverted). The verb est can appear in different tenses, and you can insert adverbs as usual: « Que serait-ce donc que … ? ». Furthermore, the first element can be replaced by a more complex wh-phrase: « Quel restaurant est-ce que … ? ».

qu'est-ce qui and qui est-ce qui are unfortunately more problematic, since you can't really form questions like « ?Quel restaurant est-ce qui te plairait ? ». I believe it is still possible to change the tense and insert adverbs, however.

CapnPrep 15:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Have you read the article I listed above? I think qu'est-ce que has already been grammaticalized for the following reasons:

1. I've seen "je ne sais pas qu'est-ce que ...", in which qu'est-ce que works as a single compound, but haven't seen "je ne sais pas que serait-ce que ..." or "je ne sais pas que sont-ce que ..."
2. I've also found it is sometimes written as one word, quesque.
3. When you say "c'est un sac qu'elle a acheté," both you and the addressee know she bought something, but I believe there is no such implication when you say "qu'est-ce qu'elle a acheté?"

Anyway, I'm not fluent enough in French, and I may be wrong. - TAKASUGI Shinji 16:31, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

The pronouns ceci, cela, and ça

The conditions under which these pronouns should be used in preference to celui, celle etc could usefully be clarified. I attempted to briefly summarise section 173 of H.Ferrar's "A French Reference Grammar", but apparently not to everyone's satisfaction. :(

My text was:

These pronouns do not have a gender, and are not used to refer to people or nouns whose gender is known. If the gender is known then celui or celle or their plural forms would be used instead.

This seemed to me to reflect Ferrar and Laura Lawless's notes on about.com, but I guess it could have been an over-simplification. Perhaps someone else could provide an improved entry. Recent Runes (talk) 12:36, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

@Recent Runes: FYI: In my first-language French courses, both in primary school and in lower secondary school, I learnt to treat ceci, cela, the latter's shortened form ça, as well as the pronoun ce (which is usually complemented by a subordinate clause, or subject of the verb être as in C'est bien = It is good) as neuter demonstrative pronouns, i.e., they are neither masculine nor feminine, but they take masculine concords because of the masculine gender's primacy; and they cannot refer to persons but only to indeterminate objects, just like English this and that when used as pronouns and not as adjectives. That was long before people started discussing gender-neutral speech (I came out of higher secondary school in 1967). Celui, celle, ceux and celles also take either a subordinate clause as complement, or a -ci or -là (with hyphen) suffix, but they are respectively masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural and feminine plural (and when several nouns of both genders are meant, French always uses the masculine); and ce, cette, ces, cettes, followed by a noun and then optionally by -ci or -là, are not pronouns but adjectives and they agree in gender and number with the noun. A further complication is that in case of liaison, i.e. before a word beginning in a vowel or mute h, the pronoun ce gets elided to c' as above in c'est bien while the adjective ce becomes cet as in cet homme or cet enfant (but ce hareng because the noun hareng starts with h aspiré).

Everything I said here seems to agree with what you said earlier up.

I hope my explanation will be understood, otherwise don't hesitate to ask me to elaborate, by adding a comment starting with {{ping|Tonymec}} and ending with four tildes. — Tonymec (talk) 00:28, 18 February 2023 (UTC)