Quantités : de, beaucoup de, la plupart des

Unité GR-04 · campagne 3 · après la quantité, l'article disparaît.

Negation is not the only operator that eats articles. Expressions of quantity do it too, and B2 writing is full of them. After beaucoup, peu, trop, assez, tant, autant the article vanishes and bare de / d' remains:

• beaucoup de livres — never beaucoup des livres
• trop de café, peu de temps, *assez **d'*exemples

The mechanism is the same trace-de you met in GR-01: the quantity word does the counting, so the article's job is gone.

Two exceptions carry des legitimately, and both are exam favourites:

1. La plupart des — la plupart des élèves ont réussi. Note the verb: plural, agreeing with élèves, not with the singular la plupart.
2. Bien des — the formal-register cousin of beaucoup de: bien des lecteurs ont réagi.

So when an essay sentence starts sliding toward "beaucoup des gens", the correction is two-way: either beaucoup de gens, or — if you truly mean most — la plupart des gens. The practice set mixes the plain quantity frame with the two des-keepers so you learn to spot which family the expression belongs to before the pen moves.

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