3:48 AM
I am comforted to hear you resonate with my own experience: confusion and frustration about how the naming of grammatical objects changes. You validate that my suspicions that systems of grammar analysis can in fact be different ... without the people teaching a particular system even acknowledging this fact, and that the systems of French grammar analysis taught in French textbooks can be different than the systems of French grammar analysis taught in English textbooks.
this confused me greatly when I had thought (just a week ago) that grammar systems were more or less unified.
this confused me greatly when I had thought (just a week ago) that grammar systems were more or less unified.
it is useful to hear you mention the FLE. it will probably take another 5 years (at the rate that i am learning French..) to be able to read such a text, but it's nice to have that recommendation.
what prompted me to write this question, was when writing my first ever answer to another question on French.SE, a few days ago. i thought i was going crazy for thinking that "de + noun" was an indirect object, when the references i was checking online said differently.
"indirect object" is a term that is taught very early to (anglophone) beginners of French, so it would be nice if the term was defined consistently. sadly, it isn't :( . i'm starting to think that if (hypothetically) i ever taught French to a friend, that i'd avoid mentioning the term "indirect object" at all...
4:53 AM
@silph Random thoughts, but have you considered that de + noun, often that's the partitive article i.e. je mange de la soupe, that complement is essential because otherwise you're just eating without any extra detail so that's different. So yeah, that de is no preposition, so it doesn't count that de when you look at that sentence. That's the way I see it. I have no expertise with teaching French, and that requires expertise i.e. knowing the specific set of challenges such and such a...
Surely I'm stating the obvious here, grammar is not my forté and I'm afraid I'm better at quoting Grevisse than actually thinking through that complicated material.
But it's stuff like that that throws me off, I'm seeing that de from inside out that complement, not from outside in.
In a sentence like Je lance la balle à Paul, consider je lance de la neige à Paul, so yeah, the first is the COD and à Paul is the COI, simple stuff. But you say you wouldn't mention the "indirect object" at all... then how would you call à Paul in that sentence there?
Anyways, that's my 2c, analysis won't stop you from speaking and reading the language. There are things in English I simply replicate or imitate. I have never analyzed English language grammar. I think once or twice I looked into the CGEL or some other grammar. Fascinating material but yeah.
What I was thought was that classic COD/COI distinction with that gimmicky question that heavily relies on French native speaker reflexes and is not very useful for learners. Then they started talking about the essential one and the secondary one and I thought it mostly overlapped.
That's how little I know about modern grammar categories but I'll be sure to look into that document None provided, I mean, 200+ pages on grammar lexicon etc. is great!
1 hour later…
6:14 AM
@EylaChu-Generis indeed, it is a noteworthy observation you make, that a direct object can start with "de" because of the partitive article. still, "de + noun" -- when a partitive article is not benig used -- is still considered to be an indirect objects by certain textbooks, and not by many websites written for anglophones.
As @EylaChu-Generis says the way you analyse grammar "won't stop you from speaking and reading the language". It will just help you improve it.
@silph I don't think it's a matter of disagreeing as such. Where 1st language is concerned the disagreement is just in the way things are named because the grammatical objects are perceived in a different perspective. Where 2nd language is concerned it's just we can't help comparing with our mother tongue and grammatical categories don't always correspond. And as @EylaChu-Generis says "French native speaker reflexes" are not very useful for learners of a second language.
A reading I found most interesting on the relationship between mother tongue and foreign language teaching and learning is Awareness of Language-an introduction by Eric Hawkins. I read it nearly half a century ago, the way languages are taught in Britain has slightly changed (slightly) but it probably still gives a good insight on the subject.
4 hours later…
11:16 AM
@silph [continued] English doesn't have one name for complément de nom. You can see that the complément du nom Wikipedia article in French links to the Genetive construction Wikipedia article in English. But the term "genitive construction" is not a translation of the French term complément du nom.
12:16 PM
@silph One point I'd like to make about direct/indirect intransitive. I apologise in advance if it's too basic for you. Direct or indirect transitivity does not cross languages. "He failed/passed his exam" both verbs are direct transitive in English. Translation into French : Il a échoué à son examen Il a réussi à son examen. Both échouer & réussir are transitive indirect in French. Just one example.
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